Snow: The Burning of Brimstone
by Corrupted Champion
Summary: Most people think that Raccoon city was the first to fall to the T-virus. Damien Snow is living proof to the contrary, as he witnesses a outbreak first hand. He and his older brother were in the middle of it, and this is how he survived it. WARNING strong language and violence. Prequel to Operation Burnside.
1. Prologue

**This is an idea I've had for about a year now. It was originally pitched to another author, Librius, but I didn't put as much background into Damien like I wanted to. If you've ever read the Enduring the Evil series you would recognize the name, if not give it a try, it's a good read and made by a good writer. **

**A problem was with my summary. I made it seem like this was mainly about a man surviving a outbreak before Raccoon city. There are two different stories in the plot, one about the outbreak, and the other is about Damien recounting what happened and discussing it with Adam and others while referencing about what happened to him on Rockfort Island and how the outbreak he endured helped to forever alter his life and existence as a human being.**

**Inspiration for the story and some of its scenes and characters are from The Walking Dead, Arrow, The Originals, The Walking Dead Survival Instinct, Dead Island Riptide, Dead space 2, Lock-out, the Jeepers Creepers films, and Teen Wolf. **

* * *

**Prologue**

**Military Bunker somewhere in the United State**

**Interrogation room **

**January 1****st****, ****1999**

Damien was sitting on a chair in the interrogation room, his hands tightly restrained behind the chair, and waited at one end of a table. For most of the days he had been in this rat hole of a jail, Damien rarely heard or saw anything, and coming in did not yield any answers for him. He knew it was not a foreign prison, he was back in the United States; he knew that for sure. Where? He was not entirely certain.

After escaping Rockfort Island prison and Antarctica, Damien was flown from military base to military base by a helicopter, in a Bell UH-1 Iroquois. There was hardly much for him to see on the way in, on account of the soldiers blocking most of the windows. As far as Damien was able to glance from his own, it was inland. It was either D.C. or Roswell, New Mexico. He was really hoping it was D.C. cause being sent to the same place they lock up the E.T.'s was not his idea of a dream vacation.

"Don't suppose it's too much to ask you boys for a pitch of water, or a glass of milk maybe?" He joked while looking over to one of the military men guarding him. They would never respond to any of his attempts to make them say anything. After being dumped in the room, and cuffed to this chair, Damien always had these two guards looking over him like a hawk or guard dog. He took a careful look at their uniforms, they were definitely U.S. military; probably Army, definitely not Navy or Marines. Possibly MP's. His brothers always showed him uniforms of the various military branches, and they wore no logo or indicators to who they belonged to.

The only silver lining to this situation was being out of his old prison garments. Somehow they got their hands on his old clothes, from before Umbrella locked him up, and he was given those to wear before they took his prison clothes. Thankfully he was the same size he was two years ago: 5 feet and 6 inches.

Looking over to the one-way window, where he believed his soon interrogator was waiting, Damien yelled "HEY! ARE YOU GOANNA COME IN HERE OR WHAT!? I HAVEN'T GOT ALL DAY!"

He could see his own reflection once he finished yelling; grey eyes looking back at him. His dark brown hair was still short-cut, it was close-cropped; grown past buzz-cut but not too long yet. His face, covered in thick facial stubbles. Now he was wearing a pair of worn down blue jeans, short-sleeved shirt, and hiking boots.

Angry as hell with the conditions of his circumstances, it was sufficed to say he was in the worst mood he has ever been in his entire life, and he just wanted to be done with this. If it meant dying, he was game, as long as it was ended soon. Claire was god-only-knows where with her brother; his close-friend Steve was dead; and he had no idea where the rest of his friends were. Steve…Damien couldn't stop thinking about him. How he failed him, how he died, and how he felt as dead on the inside as Steve surely was. Escaping through two hell holes only to end up in a third, and some of his friends were dead. After surviving all that pain and death, he had hoped to know some resemblance of a normal life, however it did not occur as he hoped; such as life always does.

Finally the only door into the room opened up, and a man was standing in the doorway. He was older than most of the men here, and could have been their elder leader or maybe patriarch, and wore a suit and tie. He was no company man, no CIA or NSA, but definitely involved with the government; he could have passed for one though. Damien disliked him the moment he walked in.

"Hello, Snow." He did not give idea or credentials, only a name. "I'll spare you the time with names, I'm Adam Benford. We need to have a little chat." He was accompanied by another military type; a very strong and muscular.

Looking over at Adam's chauffer and back, Damien could tell this man in a monkey suit was not some clown sent in to talk with him. There was not much to do but ask "Why am I here, other than the usual loneliness and suffering part."

Adam offers him a cigarette, but Damien nods a no. "I don't smoke." Shrugging his head, Adam puts the cigarettes away, and scoffs "Your pass." It didn't stop him from toying with a lighter that Damien recognized all too well.

"As for why you're here, Snow. I have no idea to be honest."

Aside from the lighter, Adam had another item with him; a file with Damien's name on it. He soon opened it up as he speaks "You have quite the interesting background Mr. Damien Hale Snow. Born on March 15, in 1978 in Tall Oaks, New England; your the bastard son of an unfaithful mother and a unknown male. What I find even stranger about you, is that before your disappearance you were a college student of the Ivy University, majoring on the occult, and becoming an expert in folklore, despite the fact you come from a family of soldiers, well your more like the bastard step-son in the family of soldiers; Your step-father, Michael Vincent was a marine, so was your step-grandfather and your real grandfather. You have four older half-brothers: the late James H. Vincent, a disgraced ex-marine, who served in operation desert storm; Specialist Oliver H. Vincent, a infantrymen in the Army Rangers; Lieutenant Jon H. Vincent, a Navy Seal of five years; and of course your oldest brother Lieutenant Commander Alec H. Vincent, a Navy Seal of ten years. Your step-uncle was a Navy Seal also, if I'm not mistaken."

"Yeah he was; political scumbags like yourself sent him to get shot at in Vietnam. Then when that didn't do him in, you helped him get cancer with that gas of yours; nearly killed him too. Hope your not sore about it" Damien replied. He still hated the government for putting his uncle through all that hell. Then of course he had to watch his uncle nearly die fighting through the cancer. Tom may not be his real uncle, but he treated Damien like he was, and Damien loved him for it.

"Whatever your here to talk about, just spill it. I'm not here to make idle chitchat about my family or how legitimate my relation to them is." Damien said, before taking a punch to the jaw for talking badly to Adam. He could hear Adam chastising the person who punched him, but could not hear the name.

"I must apologize for my compatriot here. He tends to get excited doing interrogations; and your right, we're not here to talk about your family. I would like to say, my family understands the sacrifices your family has made over the years." Adam apologized to the beaten young man.

"What, you saying you served?" Damien asked. Adam nodded his head, and responded "I did, same as your brothers, when I was a younger man than I am now; but that was long before all of this started."

Damien did his best to show some restraint after hearing that. He may not have loved the family he was born into, more or less, but he was raised to respect a soldier and by god and the devil themselves he was going to follow through with it.

Looking at the file again, Adam says "You've survived quite the ordeal; two outbreak in the past weeks, and still only twenty. The fact you've lasted so long surprises me. It's almost as if you had experience with this kind of thing." When he finished the kind tone in Adam's voice faded from sight. "Tell me something, Snow; what do you about what happened to a small bayou town named Brimstone on October 31 in 1996?"

If there was a part of Damien willing to show Adam any respect, it was gone because of those words he received. He simply gave a frown before saying "Fuck you!"

Then the man with Adam gave Damien a quick punch to the jaw, again. Damien was fairly pissed at that point, and wanting nothing more than to beat both men to death, however was forced to take it. For now he was immobile, unable to move and forced to stay put.

Adam got smug before saying "Now, Snow. I understand you barely know me, but you should really consider your options before saying anything; I can make things go along smoother and I can also make it feel like a living hell. All I need is for you to tell me what I need to know."

"Well in that case," Damien said before he once again frowned and this time he spits at Adam. Following up, he says "Kiss my ass, company man."

Damien took another punch to the face. A few more followed for each smart-ass comment he gave to Adam, and then some. He did not want to talk about what they wanted; they had no right to ask him. The Government was aware of what Umbrella was doing, and still did nothing to stop them.

"I don't like hurting you, Snow!" Adam said from across the table.

If Damien didn't know any better, he would have thought this was his idea of playing the empathy card. He still found it a hard pill to swallow. After pulling back up from the punch and looking across at Adam, Damien motioned his head at the man beating him, and he asks sarcastically "Really, is that why you're having him do it for you?"

Adam made a disappointed face. "I could have Rupert bludgeon you all day and night; I just don't see the point." Then he gets up from his seat "The others said you would be more reasonable than this, how disappointing."

"I'm being beaten to death by a idiot grunt named Rupert?" Damien asked before sniggering. Then he was breaking out in a laugh as Rupert came up to deliver another blow to the face.

"Others?" Damien repeated one small part of the statement, while recovering from the hit, then asks when his head is back up "You mean my friends?"

Adam believed that had calmed Damien down some, and he took back his seat at the table. Now speaking in an even more serious tone, Adam says "From what little my people have collected on Umbrella, we now know that Raccoon city was not the first Biohazard sight; it was just another place where the T-virus broke out."

Damien knew what he was talking about, he knew the second the date was mentioned, and still did not want to talk about it. However the possibility that one of his friends could have negotiated his release in exchange for this information, it was too good of a chance to pass up, if it really happened.

"You want to know about Brimstone?" Damien asked the man. "Why should I tell you anything? You people spent the past two years lying about what happened there."

He definitely considered talking about it, but once again, he was wondering why he should even bother talking at all. After all these were the people who spent the better part of two years covering up what happened in Brimstone, and now they wanted him to spill the beans about what he knew. For all he knew they could be pooling a fast one and trying to deal with any remaining lose ends now that the world is asking about Raccoon City.

"I acknowledge our actions caused many tragedies. I understand why you must hate your own country right-now. Any information you can give could help us in persecuting Umbrella one day."

It was doubtful that Adam regretted the actions the government took with umbrella, but he was sincere about making them pay. More than that, dam knew what Damien wanted most, Freedom. That was his desire, and he wanted it more than anything. Adam was more than prepared to offer it, but only if what Damien offered was just as good. "Tell me what you have, and you could be a free man. When you're done you can leave; no strings attached."

Damien was so surprised to hear what he wanted being offered on a silver platter, and was soon willing to take the risk, only after asking in return "Why do you even care about it now? You people spent two years lying about it."

"We want to know how involved Umbrella was in the operation. From what we understand, your older brother was one of the men on the ground, and you witnessed some of their activities."

With that in mind Damien agreed to tell them what he knew. He was still pretty resentful about them covering up the truth, but willing to talk all the same, seeing as how it was his only assured ticket at freedom and to resume his normal life.

"Fine," he said reluctantly. "One day I was dragged in for a check-up with Dr. Clarke, and that's when things began for me..."


	2. Chapter 1: Snow and his Therapist

**Chapter 1: Snow and Therapist **

**October 31****st****, 1996 **

Damien was sitting across the table from Clarke, one of the doctors, in the psych ward of what is known as the Brimstone Asylum; a facility to be only found in the country-side community of Brimstone.

Clarke wore the same white uniform as the other employees while Damien was dressed in a while t-shirt and faded pants. In that place, you were either dressed like a doctor or a patient, unless you were a visitor of course. Damien was a patient, so he was dressed like one.

Damien was not focusing on Clarke; his attention was diverted as he gazed to another figure in the room. He was experiencing another dose of his hallucinations that involved Sarah. It looked just like her; the hallucination had her unique blond hair and blue eyes, it wore her clothes, and it spoke with her voice.

He could feel the sweat trickling on his face upon seeing her ghost. Sadness over came him and remained silent at seeing her. She was one of the very few good things Damien had in his life, and now, she was gone from this world and he was all alone.

"Damien," the ghost of Sarah called out to him.

The wraith of his past mocked Damien and the memory of his girlfriend. He was restrained by the straight jacket on him and was unable to do anything about it. This pissed him off even more.

He continued to listen to the ghost's words, against his will. Closing his eyes and telling, himself, it was not real felt pointless, as he had tried before with the other hallucinations, and plugging his ears was not an option.

"Damien, why are you just sitting there? Where's our daughter? Why did you abandon me?"

The questions were from the guilt of his conscience, except for the last one, it was a lie. He would never abandon her, Damien loved Sarah more than any other girlfriend he has ever had; she was the one of the first friends he ever had after moving to Tall Oaks and the mother of his child. But he did feel like it was his fault she died.

Clarke snapped Damien from the grip of the psychotic episode he was having; snapping his fingers inches from the face. "Damien; Damien wake up!"

Suddenly, Damien felt his eyes opening, realizing that he was not hallucinating, but rather he was sleeping in a nightmare. It was like going through sleep paralysis. Every time Damien thought the nightmare had ended and he was awake, only to realize he was not, a voice told him to wake up and he realized the current reality he was in was in fact another dream.

The last one Damien had, before forcing himself to wake up for real, was of Sarah standing on the table by all four and roaring at him like a monster, like the ones from the ship. Then finally it was over and he was back to sitting only across from Clarke and no one else.

"You were drifting away for a second there, Mr. Snow." The doctor said to the patient. "I believe you were ready to answer my question."

Strangely, Damien had problems remembering the question and quickly asked "Could you please repeat the question?"

Ever the self-entitles prick, doctor Clarke sighs in annoyance before saying plainly and at a moderate pace "Please state your name and date of birth for the record. I would also like you to tell me where you are now and what year is it."

Damien sighed, himself, for a moment. For the past days his waking dreams and nightmares have kept him up all hours of the night. All of them involving Sarah, and all of them terrified Damien, giving him a chill to the bone. It made it hard for him to focus and stay awake, but finally forced the focus, and says "My name in Damien H. Snow, born in Tall Oaks during the ides of March in 1978. As for here, I can't say what room this is; just that it's the Brimstone Asylum; and the year is 1996."

"Good, patient is coherent." Clarke says, while writing on a clip board.

Clarke had the propensity to be a very pious man. He spoke of wanting nothing than to help his unwell patients, but he deprived them of even the most sensible freedoms. Drugs were given to them all, they were only effective on a daily basis, and when the doctor never had his way he deprived the medication and made them suffer through their psychotic episodes or put them in solitary confinement for no reason.

Damien was no saint either; having a history of being cynic back in those days. He was however a far better person than Clarke could ever be. Quite the conundrum actually; Damien was indeed a cynic, fowl mouthed, sarcastic, distrustful to almost anyone except for his friends and family, and always deflecting emotions with humor that could make you wonder if he was a sociopath. But you always knew where you stood with him.

Finally the doctor looked back up from the clip board as he put the pen away "Now, Mr. Snow. You've been complaining about some hallucinations and waking dreams."

"Yeah, I have." He confirmed the doctor's claims while rubbing his forehead.

He told him about the Nightmares, and about Sarah; and as Damien did this, he began to wonder: is this real or just another dream?  
The question ate at him like a parasite.

Was there truly anyway to tell whether it was real or not? He distrusted all in his life that never proved they were trust worthy, so why should reality be any different. The only ones he ever trusted were his older brothers, especially James, and his girlfriend, Sarah; or his few friends in Tall Oaks. Those not in the category were not trusted.

"These dreams and delusions of yours, Snow. They are simply a manifestation of the tremendous guilt you feel about what happened on the Charon." Clarke would say. His opinion on the matter meant little to Damien, but he knew Clarke was right.

Snow repeated it once, like a soldier saying the name of a place where hundreds of good men died "The Charon,"

The S.S. Charon, god it had been so long since anyone mentioned it. Nine months before Damien had been on it, and then he was put in the Asylum not along after. Umbrella, the international corporation, they had hired him and his girlfriend to help James with security; no one but the three of them made it off alive, just barely. It was a hellish of a cruise, and Damien, he was one of the few damned souls to find his way off.

"I see that hell every time I close my eyes." Damien said. Any doubts he had about this being real was gone, the mention of Charon was enough to convince him that he had been brought back down to earth.

"Hell… that's right. In the reports you often called it a hell on earth, filled with monsters and devils that tore men limb from limb." Dr. Clarke said. Damien watched while Clarke puts the board away in his bag.

Clarke watched while Damien continued to move his eyes around the room with an emotional gaze.

"What happened to you onboard the Charon!?" Clarke asked, obviously faking some concern, and still talking with that same cadence all doctors use when speaking with their patients.

Damien was not sure himself how to describe it; in fact he could barely remember it, as his mind blocked it from the view into his memory. "I don't know much. I remember getting on the boat; I don't remember getting off; all I remember was Sarah telling me she was pregnant, James and Sarah pulled me up by the arms and helped me off, and a few faint images of monsters with claws and fangs. There was also a lot of blood, but that's all I remember clearly."

"And that's all you remember?" Clarke asked cynically. Damien was not sure himself, but every time he wondered he would just close his eyes and think of the Ship, Charon, and of the memories leading to him getting on the boat. After that, images of blood and claws came with a blood curdling scream that haunt his nightmares.

Damien could only shake his head in an attempt to shake of the distant images before he said anything "All I can remember are those that I've told you about, but if I ever wanted to question it I close my eyes and try to force the memory and it comes back with images you'd expect to see in a horror movie; and the Alien kind of horror movie, not the Friday the 13th or Nightmare on Elm street kind of movie."

Clarke sniggered at the movie references, humored by them. Damien grew up watching those after sneaking into the theaters or stealing the money to pay for a ticket. It was all in his personal file.

Putting a recent picture up of his brother and one of girlfriend, when she was still alive, Clarke asked "Is this your older brother, James Snow and your girlfriend Sarah Marshal?" without hesitation Damien responded with a head nod before finally saying "Yes."

"Very good, you recognize them." Clarke would say before taking the pictures away. "Though, I'm saddened to tell you this, Mr. Snow; Sarah Marshal died a month ago."

"I know," Damien blurted out. He swiftly brushed off Clarke false empathy, and did not bother to express the sadness; all he did was maintain his composure.

Clarke had expected him to break down crying or something; to be crying his eyes out, nothing like Damien was now, and to be emotionally broken. Instead he treated it like old news and was doing his best not to think about.

"Are you aware of how Marshal died?" Clarke asked. "You've only had one constant visitor since you arrived, was that how you found out?"

"Well those are entirely two different questions." Damien responded. Then Clarke replied "Answer either one. I'm flexible."

Damien sighed once more, this time in annoyance, and tapped his fingers inside the straight jacket. He had grown tired of this conversation and was starting to wish it was just another dream; a boring dream too. "James came to me eight months after I was checked into this Asylum, and he told me how Sarah was in the hospital and that she died giving birth to our daughter."

"How did that make you feel?"

The question was the kind of stereotypical set of words expected to be heard when someone was mocking a therapist. 'How did it make me feel?' Damien thought to himself while irritated by the question. "Like someone slammed me into a brick wall," he joked.

Suddenly the interview was interrupted by a man walking into the room. He wore some kind of logo that was hard to make out. Clarke shared whispers with him before a nurse walked in. Then Clarke looked back to Damien.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Snow. It seems our time is past."

And with that Damien was out cold with a quick syringe insertion to the side of his neck. He was falling fast asleep as Clarke left the room and he was being taken back to his room.


	3. Chapter 2: Zombie Asylum

**Chapter 2: Zombie Asylum **

**Brimstone Asylum**

For a few hours, Damien was out cold like a man hit over the head with a hard object. Everything felt numb; his arms, his legs, all of his body felt asleep with the rest of the world sounding dead quiet. Once he thought he heard a loud pop noise, but is quickly faded away in the dark clouds of his dreams

His dreams were the same ones of Sarah, haunting him with visions of her walking body covered in blood. She was a regular bloody Mary, literally. This dream involved him still in the room talking with Clarke, still; and Sarah was sitting on the desk.

All his dreams were like this one, disturbing and haunting to no end, without ever a hint of ending until he wakes up. Sarah always asked him the same thing each time "Where's our daughter?" If not that, than she made a terrible howl of a scream before charging at him.

Dreaming was all he had really. Most of the days were spent in his room either sleeping or reading books. His favorite to read every night before going to bed was: A Game of Thrones, by George R. R. Martin; it was released two months ago and he loved to read it. Damien was too proud to admit it; he was brighter and more educated than he let on.

Despite being raised in a redneck and southern lifestyle, Damien had a habit of reading to kill time. He read Hamlet, Paradise Lost, Divine Comedy, and some of the more popular old books his mother might have read; not that he would ever know, seeing as how she was never part of his life.

If the dreams were going to stop, Damien would still require help to move. When they gave him this sedative it was, usually, followed by being strapped down in a stretcher that would make him stand up while still sleeping.

Waking up of his volition was never a normal option, since coming to Brimstone. Either the sun on the early morning raid onto his eye, or he was woken up by another living person. If none of these were the case then the nightmares would eventually wake him up, and believe it that Damien wished he would finally wake up from this nightmare.

Sarah continued with the loud noises. She barely had her mouth open, probably enough for her to make a big laugh, but for Damien it was like listening to a very loud scream. Her eyes and mouth gave off a bright light, the kind expected to be seen in the alien abduction scene of the X-files, or in a horror movie about alien abductions.

Finally the loud noises became louder and louder, until finally, the noise became one loud and endless beep sound. It was like hearing someone's heart monitor go on a flat line. Then that entire dream was covered in a bright light and out of Damien's ability to see.

Is it over? Damien thought to himself in anticipation. A light was still beaming in his eyes, just not the light Sarah was making, and it was from a small hand-held flashlight. Then he could hear a voice, as he was fading in and out of consciousness again.

"Damien," it said. The voice was definitely a man's, but was unrecognizable. "Damien, can you hear me?"

Soon Damien could hear someone's fingers snapping close to the right side of his face. Then and there, Damien knew this was not another dream, as he saw the man helping him. He was a doctor of sorts, he wore gloves, white gloves on both his hands; and he had some kind of short-sleeved shirt on with the same logo the man talking to Clarke had.

Before, Snow was not able to make heads or tails of the logo. He saw an "H" but that was the only whole number he was able to see. The next one he could only see half of, it could have been an "O" or a "C". Now he was able to read the full logo: H.C.F.

The man looked back once, after checking his temporary patient for any abnormalities, and was acting like some was chasing after him.

For all Damien knew he could have just been a new employee, and was nervous about messing up on his first day, so he didn't think much of him. Nothing about this situation gave him a cause for concern; it was Brimstone asylum for Christ sake. This was the safest place in the world he had ever seen, second only to his home in Tall Oaks.

The asylum was no place of constant hustle and bustle, now it was so quiet it was ridiculous. The sounds that could usually be heard were the occasional passing doctors, in this case in was dead quiet like any common graveyard.

The man waking Damien up, he put the flash light down, and now had one free hand. He pressed on a small radio, sticking out from the shirt pocket on his chest, and says "Ada, I found Damien Snow."

He must have thought the message did not reach the other side of radio link, pressing on the radio's button again, and saying "Repeat, I found subject zero."

It was hard, for Damien, to understand why he was being referred to as subject zero. In his whole life no one ever called him that, not once. Hearing it was infuriating to him, and he wanted to do some about it, and he would if this stupid straight jacket wasn't still on.

"Great work, Emil." A female voice was heard reply from the small box of a radio. "Be careful with him, though. He's been in that asylum a long time."

Nine months, nine months Damien had been here. That woman's voice was right; he had been here a long time. When they brought him here all those months ago, he was so hopped up on anti-depressants and a whole mess of other pharmaceutical drugs that he could barely remember the day of the month.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," Emily was stuttering under his breath.

Damien was no longer strapped in a stretcher to make him stand up while asleep; when he woke up he was laying back down on his floor mattress of a bed. Emil quickly helped him up to his feet. "Good, good; steady, steady, easy there, Snow." Emily gently instructed.

"Let's get the straight jacket off."

Looking around the room, Damien tried to remember how he came to be here, and he asks "What's going on?"

A distant sound caused Emil to look back. He was one paranoid son of a bitch, for sure. He was so scared of whatever was coming that he jumped at the sound of a little wind. Damien was beginning to think Emil would even jump at his own shadow if he could see it.

"I know you're confused right now, but believe me when I say, you need to trust me. I want to get you out and can explain everything later back at the base. Listen, you are in terrible danger right now." Emily attempted to get some trust out of Damien.

Like hell I do, Damien wanted to say. He never trusted anyone he just met.

Unbeknownst to Emil a man walked into the room, after he looked back to Damien. For the patient, who could see him, it was just someone who looked to be sick. He walked like a robot with his legs jolting on each step, the blood on his clothing was barely noticeable until it was too late.

"Holy Christ," Damien slurred his curse, as he watched in horror.

Emil was suddenly attacked before Damien could say a word. The blood-stained patient pulled Emil back; biting down into the back of his neck. Blood gushed out from the wound in a flood down the neck and back, as well as the front.

It dripped down the body is separate rivers that connected and divided repeatedly as it trickled down the body. Then the blood dropped down onto the floor in drops that would soon surround the feet.

Damien had seen some serious injuries in his life, and this one had to be one of the most traumatic ones for him to witness up close and personal. And that was saying something, considering all that he has seen. His nightmares from the Charon ship left partial images of people having long claws tear into, and they gushed out blood like Emil was now.

Part of Damien felt bad about what was happening to Emil. He barely knew Damien, and still he tried to help him. Again and again he tried to think of a reason why this complete stranger went out of his was for this, only to die.

Was it so he could serve another purpose? Could he have just wanted to save him? Or was there some other reason he was unaware of?

People are in this life for themselves, why would he help me? That was the thought ringing through Damien's head in the form of a question.

There was hardly any time for him to think, once the man was done chewing down on Emil, as he came at Damien moaning. It was like being in George Romero's horror film: Night of the Living Dead. But this was no movie. He was susceptible to being the monsters next victim, leaving was no option, and he had to act fast.

Smashing his head into the zombie's skull, Damien knocked it back, and he says "Take that, you decaying piece of shit!" He insulted the walking corpse as it was lying on the ground and moaning still, as it began to recover. Then he realized he was celebrating a little early. "Suppose I spoke too soon."

**Military Bunker**

**1999**

"That was your first encounter with the infected." Adam asked Damien, interrupting him in the middle of his story-telling.

Don't you just hate it when someone, usually a kid, interrupts a classic movie with a million questions; well, Adam was a lot like that with the story of Brimstone.

"Yes, but that's not the whole story. It's not the part you want to know about, is it?" Damien said, obviously annoyed.

Nothing irked him more than an interrupter of a good story. He had enough of them in the past to last him a lifetime.

"What happened once you were safe in the room?" Adam asked.

Damien felt a temptation to continue on with the story, stay serious and avoid more punches, but his temptation for being a smart-ass always gets the better of him like it did then. A trait no-doubt inherited from his real father.

"Well…" he began to trail off while considering the words for the next part of his witty reply. Then he finally had them "First I escaped, drove into town, and it was coupon night; so I figured I'd trampoline your wife."

Like clockwork, Rupert came up with another punch for Snow's jokes.

All these punches had put a tiny amount of blood on the top of his forehead, coming down from his hair; as well as from one of his nostrils. He pain them no mind, and ignored them like blemishes on a pasty face teen. It was Damien had a mild tolerance for pain.

Adam was motioning his head in grudging annoyance as Damien brought his back up from the punch. You're a real comedian aren't you, Snow?" he asked while Damien spits out some blood.

"Well, I guess that's what they mean when someone calls it a punch line," the restrained man said before taking another punch from Rupert.

Adam opened the file, looking for something in Damien's story that intrigued him. Then finally he sees it, and he asks "When this, Emil, man rescued you. You said he was speaking with someone on a radio, a woman?"

"Yeah, yes she was."

Adam was going somewhere with this seemingly pointless question "Who was this mystery woman?"

Shrugging his shoulder and bracing for another punch to the face, Damien says "Her name was fuck you."

"Oh really, is that right?" Adam asked before Damien replied "Yeah, she was Asian, I believe."

This comment earned a slight smug from Adam, who enjoyed hearing Rupert's footsteps, as he walked up for another punch to Snow's face.

When the punch ended, Damien looked up to Adam, half of his face felt like crap. And believe me when I say that is saying something. His step-father, James's dad, beat him up a couple times to where it was enough for him to stand most pain. He could tolerate it, but not help but feel it.

"I'm not goanna tell you, and Mr. Punchy here, that yet!" He announced to the two of them. "I'm telling the story as it happened and what I experienced in chronological order."

This time, Adam stopped Rupert from punching Damien. He was willing to show the young man some respect for how he wanted to tell the story, that and he sure knew how to take a punch, and part of him believed that he owed it to the young survivor. With everything he learned from Leon and the other survivors of the Rockfort Island outbreak, he was willing to respect Damien for living through all that hell.

Waving his hand, after motioning for Rupert to stop, Adam motions it at Damien says "Very well, please continue."

Damien tapped his fingers on the table in a rhythm. He was seriously starting to doubt the odds of him ever leaving this place alive. He thought his cynical nature was a thing of the past, but his trust issues still lingered even after Brimstone and Rockfort Island. He just needed to shake it off better.

"Let's see…Emil was just turned into a man-sandwich for a zombie, oh that's right, I ran out the door, like a bat out of hell."

**Brimstone Asylum**

Running out of the room, where he had spent the greater part of the last nine months, Damien was quickly seeing more and more of the walking corpses. Feasting on the corpses of the dead doctors and patients alike, without distinction or discrimination; it did not matter to the zombies who the bodies were before, now they were all just food to help fuel their glutinous rampage of death and destruction.

Breathing was hard for Damien, looking at them was almost more than he could bear. The air of the atmosphere around him reeked of macabre.

They had bitten down and mauled them; eating their insides in chunks, with blood covering their hands as they scarf down the human flesh excitedly. This, and what happened to Emil, would have been enough to make Damien barf what little food he ate today; thankfully he was more focused on running than he was with being disgusted by them.

People sometimes are quoted on how they hated some ones guts, well these zombies must be polar opposite to most, because they loved to gorge down on them like they were a five star meal.

As Damien was running, with the straight jacket still on him, the walking dead were eating at the entrails until they saw him; then they went straight for him. He may have spent most of his time in this nut house confined to his room, but he had been taken out through the hall a few times coherent, and with each walk he learned his way through the building so good that he knew the hallways like the back of his hand.

The run nearly killed him from lack of oxygen, on account of how hard he was running, and doing his best not to get caught. He did not want to end up like Emil; for certain it was his desire to live through this ordeal.

Finally he came through the one doorway that mattered, after passing through a large variety of other doorways and hallways. As soon as Damien was through, the door slammed shut and locked tightly. Without that door, the zombies in that section of the building were confined; at least until they break a window and crawl their way out. After that, they'll walk around to the front door and probably either maul him or march for the town.

A man with free arms was the one who closed it; Damien couldn't have done it with his jacket restraining his arms. The man who saved him, it was Axel, another doctor in the psych ward. Still wearing his doctor uniform, and covered with spots of red blood.

Axel was like Damien; his hair was cut close-cropped, with stubbles on his face. They did that to everyone here. If you were a patient, well your hair was cut short, facial and all other hairs on the head. There was no say in the matter either; they would just hold you down, and all the while it was cut off one way or another. Some doctors voluntarily let the barbers here cut their hair.

It reminded Damien of the buzz haircuts, the ones his brothers and uncle used to talk about when speaking of their time in the Marines, Army, and Navy.

Other than that, they were different in age and skin tone. Axel had a tanned darkened skin and light brown hair.

When the door was tightly closed and locked to where the monsters could not get in, Axel turned facing Damien and held it from behind the neck and putting the blade of a knife close to his neck. He knew the knife the good doctor was using; it was his own hunting knife.

Axel was always a little on edge, considering where he worked, it was understandable. But this was over, even his depraved, edge. It was like he became more feral. As Damien was twirled around, he could hear Axel making an almost psychotic kind of laugh; he had become more like some of the hysterical cases here in the asylum.

"I remember you!" Axel said. "Number 36,"

Chuckles, he was still struggling to keep the laughs in check. With every sentence he made, the psychotic laughs continued. Try listening to a hyena and you'll have a general idea what he was sounding like.

"The boys upstairs; they said we had to eliminate all those pesky troublesome subjects. Wonder how they missed you; must have wanted to save the favorite experiment for last!"

Whatever had happened to Axel when this all happened, it was obvious, he was far beyond being out of his god damned mind. This did not stop Damien from trying to reason with him; people may be in this life for themselves, but that never stopped some of them from being reasonable.

"Easy, just take it easy; killing me won't do you any good. Help me out of this coat, and we can escape this place!" He said.

It was not so pathetic to beg for your life, but Damien was not beginning, he was bargaining. He tried to make some kind of agreement with Axel, to form a beneficial partnership that both men would be happy with.

Axel nodded his head, not agreeing with working together, and only giving a grudging amount of release on his grip to the back of the neck before saying "There's no escaping from the things I've done here for the past days." Then his hand holding the knife tightened the grip and Damien assumed he was getting ready to kill him.

"Don't do it!" this time he was giving more of a plea. "You don't have to do this."

The knife was pulled away from the side of Snow's neck, and thrust towards somewhere in his torso; Damien thought for a second he felt the knife jam beneath his chest, but it didn't. He stared down Axel as it happened, and his eyes stared back into grey eyes with a cold stare.

The parts of the jacket constricting Damien's arms were cut off by the sharp blade. Damien quickly pulled off the jacket, giving a few quick stuttering thank you, and dropped it to the ground. Now he was free to motion his arms in a circles and stretches.

Damien could not believe he was still alive. He thought for sure the unstable Axel was going to stab him to death; instead, he freed his prisoner; after that he remained motionless for a second or two, and did not even reply to the thank you.

"Your belongings are in that locker back there, take it. It's not like I'll need it anyway." Axel said, while he backed away from Damien, and brought himself closer to a work desk. "Except for your crossbow; I guess that's still in the storage."

Looking around the room, Damien could just barely recognize it. He was in what amounted to the principal's office in the asylum. Where doctors worked on paper work and used the computer to send messages over to another doctor in a major city or, with some rare cases, to the Umbrella Corporation with requests for supplies or a professional opinion on some of the patients.

There were a few desks and lamps; as well as a broke down compute, papers, and of course pencils and pens to work with.

Damien then looked back to the locker, Axel, was talking about. Like he said, it had all of Snow's old things in them. Clothes, lighter, and some old pictures; all of them kept in a traveling back pack that was air-lock shut.

After taking the bag of his belongings, Damien looked back to Axel. He was still erratic and out of control but still looking at Snow with a crazy glare; and he mutters, while still an emotional roller coaster "There's no hope of escape, Damien. Everyone in this place in goanna die for what Clarke and the others' did to you."

Before Damien could say anything, Axel brought the knife up to the left side of his neck. The blade of the knife digs into the side of his neck, and drags across to the other side of his neck, blood then gushes through the wound. He slit his own throat.

Damien raised his hand up, ready to yell not to do it, and it was too late.

Falling back was all the body had left to do, and Damien was left with picking up his knife among the bloody mess that was once Axel. Kneeling down, while reaching for it, he looked at Axel. Now that he was dead, there was finally a look of peace in his expression; like the madness he had succumbed to no longer have a hold on him.

After retrieving his knife, Damien backed away from the body and made sure the other door leading out was locked. He once again made use of the locker. There was a mirror on the inside of the door and used it to look at himself.

He still had some blood from when Emil was killed.

Damien pulled of his asylum pants and put on the cargo pants. The clothes they made for the patients was comfortable enough, but not good enough to help with traveling outside of the complex, and he needed to get into town.

His brother could still be there.

Pulling off the shirt was more disturbing for Damien, as he knew what horrible images were to be seen underneath. He was not uncomfortable with the way his body is; in fact he was in good shape. Ribs and the rest of his muscles were healthy and strongly bulking. The only thing about his body that he never liked was the scars.

20% of his body was covered in scar tissue; some were two marks on the right side of his chest, and one on the left side of his abdomen. These were a "gift" from father; not his real father, seeing how his mother never said who he was, but a man who did damage to Damien that only a father could do.

The only other thing worth of mentioning on him was a tattoo he had on the front of his left shoulder. It was a birds of a feather tattoo with the tip of the feather twisting and pointing to the right of his body towards the left side of his chest. With this tattoo was another close to it that had eight birds flying away from the feather.

"Thanks for the present dad." Damien said; he was speaking sarcastically to the absent patriarch who ruined most chances he had at ever trusting people.

Damien soon pulled the black t-shirt on. He was glad to not see the scars now. Who could blame him? Then he grabs the bag, clipping the single strap around him, and looks back to the door close to Axel's body, unsure of how to proceed.

He had no real plan, other than hoping his brother was alive and in town, and there was no way to estimate how many of those zombie things were out there. All he knew for sure was that he wanted to get out of this madhouse and back out into civilized society.

A sudden scream soon changed him objective however. "OH GOD, HELP ME! STAY BACK, STAY BACK. I SAID STAY BACK!" a panicking voice could be heard screaming. It was Clarke's voice, followed by the sound of a pistol firing.

With the sounds in mind, and someone to help him escape, Damien moved for the door; taking one last sad look at Axel, and then he left and never wanted to go back.


	4. Chapter 3: The Man with a Tomahawk

**Chapter 3: The Man with a Tomahawk **

**Brimstone Asylum**

**South-West Hallways**

**1996**

Damien was sifting through the asylum, finding the corpses of many dead men and women. They all looked appalling, and enough to make you throw-up your most recent meal. The walls had a splatter of blood here and a little spatter there, like most of the halls throughout the asylum, where zombies had passed.

Such a sight gave macabre images of the massacre that took place here. Dawn of the dead must have taken place here, because some zombie heads were blown off or had a blade dig into the head, and some police men were held up in here.

These police men were not really with the police, they were deputies. Brimstone was too small of a community to have a police station.

All the way out here in the Louisiana bayou, it was more like a country-side area. These deputies were of the Brimstone sheriff's department. Going through all pistols, Damien figured out they were pillaged of their clips and one was missing. The shotguns must have been left in their cars or taken as well. Going through the hallways, Damien continued to feel like he was in a horror move.

'What does this make me? Ripley?' He thought to himself; and after seeing how Ripley's story played out, he was hoping the answer was a firm hell no.

Looking for Clarke was still his priority, he just was taking it slow and steady. He was willing to take a chance, just not an insane chance. That was good thinking for a man who spent the past nine months living among crazies in this insane asylum.

Suddenly a zombie, cowardly playing possum, pounced on Damien. He was on the ground, wrestling the zombie for control in the struggle, and trying to grab his hunting knife. He dropped it when the zombie attack, but was still within arm's reach.

The left arm pressed against the zombie's neck, and under the jaw, while his right arm reached for the weapon. This zombie was a real fighter with a jaw that would bite open and shut like one of those wind-up teeth toys.

In a moment of one of his psychotic episodes, Damien saw the zombie change from a decaying brunet, and into a decaying blond. It looked just like Sarah, with all the other attributes of the zombies; even blood shot eyes. Then it turned back into the zombie again.

It was so irritating to Damien. "I don't have time for this shit!" he barked at the zombie.

'So close and so far' he thought while trying to reach for the knife. He could practically see door, and was sure that it was the doctor's office. Now he was likely to be a meal for one of these literal brain dead monsters.

Could he head butt it like he did the first one? Maybe kick it off him? Or perhaps if he let the zombie bit down on his arm it would give him some time to grab for the knife? No, none of these were any good. The first two failed, the last was not an option. There was no way in hell Damien would voluntarily turn into one of these things.

He just needed to resume reaching for the knife.

Reaching for it was a pain in the ass and arm, obviously on account of him reaching so hard for the knife, and a strain on his muscles. It was all he could do to reach for the weapon while holding the zombie head back from his own.

Some drool coming down on, or near, his face did not make things any easier for him.

Finally Damien was able to grab the knife; the crucible was near its end. He looked up at the zombie, still biting at him ferociously and desperately for a bite, and he lunges for the temple of the skull. There was a faint crack sound to be heard within the head, as the knife went through, and various other sounds as the zombie drew its last gargle and died.

He had no hesitation about using his weapon; the zombie would have bitten down on him and not think twice about it, and was glad that it was finally done with; after he pushed the body off to the side and took in a sigh of relief.

Quickly he pulled himself up from the ground; he could feel his heart beating like a drum. He was still jumpy from the experience and wanted to move on from it. As he was standing up, he witnessed the zombie turn into Sarah one last time, and it was over.

"I'm sorry, Sarah." He said to the wraith that continued to haunt him and scar his soul.  
Only one thought came to mind while standing in the hallway, and recovering from the episode of horror and that was get to Clarke's office, and then the thought to follow was for him to get the hell out of dodge.

This asylum always had a dark feeling to it, but this feeling, Damien was having now, and it was evil; the kind of evil only a demon should be able to make you feel.

For the first few months in the asylum, Damien would often hear rumors about the asylum from some of the other patients, Bobby and David, of the numerous murders that happened here over the years. Some times they said it was a hospital for people dying a deadly disease in the early 1900's; at other times people said a wealthy family once made this their homes until one of their sons went off the rocker and killed every one there or they all killed themselves by a hanging; the last one was that in the early 1970's a cult owned the asylum, and they tried to summon a demon into the world by sacrificing virgins kidnapped from the locals. Later the police came to arrest them; the gun fight between the cultists and the police lasted five hours into the night before finally they killed themselves in a last ditched attempt to complete the ritual. Some rumors persisted over the years that their last sacrifice brought a demon, Azazel, into the world, and now it torments some of the patients and doctors in the asylum.

Damien never put stock in such idle gossip like the others did; he always brushed it off as bullshit, but now there were literally dead men walking around, so he was starting to think it might be time to reevaluate what is possible to be real.

A creak was heard coming from the door to Clarke's office door. It was opening up and something, or someone, was coming out. When the door opened up, a bald headed man walked out. This man, he wore a long black coat, boots, even gloves with only square of flesh showing from the hands. It had no facial features, not even a mouth, only dark red eyes.

One more thing about this man caught Damien's attention. He was holding a military issued tomahawk, still dripping blood from a victim.

The man took one look at Damien, and then he walked away.

Before leaving, Damien was prepared to fight. He was tightening the grip on his knife for a tough fight, only to have the man put a finger in front of where the mouth should have been and made a gesture of a shush.

"Monsters in the bayou," Damien scoffed as it walked down the hall, with its boots making large stomping sounds with every step. "Zombies in the asylum, monster with strange peers walking around holding a tomahawk; strange times we live in."  
It was such a queer thing to see these things occur.  
All Damien's life, he knew of strange tales from various folklores and legends of monsters and demons in remote regions in the world.

James and some of the other older brothers, Oliver, Jon and Aiden, would love to scare him with these stories when he was a little boy. Hell hounds, The Rake, Moth man, Creeper, Werewolves, even the blue albino woman; all of them were stories he heard, and more. This was something else; it was like being in one of his brothers' stories and it was worse.

The creature scared him in a way no story ever could.

'At least I have some good news' Damien thought to himself. With the creature gone, he felt one small weight lift from his shoulder. After all, with that monster running around, the zombies would be focusing on something else.

It was no time to think about things too much; Damien walked closer to the office.  
Doctor Clarke's office, room one hundred and one, was dead quiet with no sounds of life. He was not a very excited or hyper man, and a lousy person at heart, yet even he was human and could not help to make any kind of noise, even breathing.

The closer Damien came to the door, he would still hear nothing; and he has good hearing. It was so quiet he could drop a pin and only hear the pit hitting the ground. As his steps brought him closer to the doorway, Damien nervously prepared his knife for any zombie that could be inside; he had no way to foresee what was waiting on the other side: Doctor Thomas Clarke's corpse. He was not killed by the teeth and claws of zombies but by a sharp blade; it was probably done by the monster's tomahawk.  
His approaching death must have been what the yelling was about.

The body was lying back in the chair of his desk. There was blood on and around the body, and it was all his. He suffered one horrible of a death.

"Jesus, Clarke," he said while looking at the remains of the doctor. "I always thought karma was a bitch, but this was overkill!"

Clarke was never good to Damien, or any of the patients here in the asylum. He took delight in making sure a stay in Brimstone was worse for them than it normally would be. He was the Tiller of the asylum; this was his Alcatraz, and he was its deputy warden, so it was bad luck to have him on you. Even in questioning, Clarke was rude to Snow, and he used restraint during the recorded conversations, and after that his façade of good nature was no more.

Examining the body, Damien could not help but feel sorry for the doctor. He may have been a cynic, but even he had empathy. His body took one hit to the arm two, hits in the upper left side of the chest, and one final one to the center of the forehead. Most of the deputies' missing ammunition was to be found in the room, with the clip in the doctor's gun empty. Even in death he was still gripping the Beretta 92FS, that was taken off one of the dead deputies.

"Thanks for the gift, Dr. Dick head." He insulted the corpse as he took the Beretta out of the dead man's hand; formally brushing off whatever sympathies he was feeling. This may not have been what Damien imagined happening to him, but either way, the bad this man did came back to haunt him, finally. There was also a holster on the body to take; probably to use in case he had to make a run for the town. Damien put his knife way in is scabbard, and then after putting the berretta in the holster, sets the holsters close to the knife on the right side of his pants.

Along with the doctor's body was a collection of papers and files; all of them were on Damien Snow and his blood word. Along with these was a recorder, like the ones doctors use in their sessions, and so first Damien closed the door. He took whatever he could find in the room to muffle the noise from being loud enough to attract any zombies.

"Alright, dear old doc; what the heck were you doing in here?" Damien asked with to the corpse, now in the corner, as he prepared to play the recording. He pressed the play button and quickly did his best to muffle the noise it made, only to realize the voice whispering, and all the noise was too low to attract any attention and pulled off of it.

"My name is Doctor Thomas Clarke, of the Brimstone county asylum," the voice of the recording box said; it was Doctor Clarke's voice. He was whispering in a hushed tone, and it was easy to tell he was very frightened by whatever was going on. His sense of superiority was crushed under such intense fear and paranoia, like Emil was.

"For a few days now, the asylum has been besieged by the undead. Walking corpses have roamed the halls of this asylum, searching for any person to bite and consume in a glutinous feast. My colleagues and patients have been killed and turned into these things, and wander the halls to join them in killing any other survivors. I believe them all of them to be dead, except for Snow; he is still locked in his room."

'Days' Damien wondered to himself after pausing the recording and asks "How long was I asleep?" Then begins the recording again. The doctor's voice came back on in a second and continued on speaking with whatever was happening in his final moments.

"I've hold myself up in my office, because it is the most familiar to me. I had hoped Umbrella's U.S.S. team would reach me, but so far they've failed to live up on their end. What few deputies that made it to the asylum have been killed."

For Clarke to be waiting up for help to arrive from Umbrella did not surprise Damien. He had been in there pockets for years, and was in contact with some of the employees in a town called Raccoon city. But to hear the mention of the U.S.S. was a surprise. James worked in that bunch for several years now, and for them to be making a promise of rescue to some stooge like Clarke seemed out of character for them.

"For the past few weeks, I've received instructions from Wesker in Raccoon City. This happened before the walking dead started happening, so I doubt this was intentionally caused. I was told to do tests on a subject's blood; one Damien Snow. They've had me send my findings on psychological and physical state of being. I do not know what for, but I've come to this conclusion; he must have some connection to the Dr. Birkin's experiment in Brimstone."

"Wesker, Birkin." Damien repeated the name while trying to make sense of what was happening.

Why would Umbrella want my blood? Damien thought to himself in confusion. It was hard to fathom what connection he could possibly have with this Dr. Birkin or any experiment they were conducting. Then there was the matter of this Wesker person who ordered his blood-work.

All good questions but of no real relevance to him escaping from here; one silver lining did come out of this, he knew something was going on in Brimstone.

There was nothing left to hear on the recording, other than Clarke ramble on about the zombies and his final moments before his death, and he presses the pause button. He put the recorder down and turned to face Clarke's corpse.

What Damien turned to face Clarke, it was nothing like he thought to see. Instead of seeing the corpse, he sees Sarah run up to him with a screwdriver. If Damien had not caught her hands, then he would have been down one eye ball. Instead he had the tip of the screwdriver close to his eye as Sarah continued try and gouge his eye with it. Snow fought it with all his strength.

Finally it ended. The apparition halted its homicidal attempts to kill Damien, and it simply vanished from existence. There was still a screwdriver close to his eye, but only because he was holding it that close to begin with. Only he remained in the room; just him and the corpse.

"What the hell is going on with me?" Snow asked himself while dropping the knife. The hallucination had him sweating like a hooker in church, and was causing him to lose his grasp of reality. He wondered if he was going crazy or if there was something wrong with his brain.

These hallucinations were getting more and more violent.

Damien did not want to be in the room a second longer and left, and had one last stop before leaving the coo-coo shack he found himself in. That would be the storage room up front, where all the weapons found on new patients are kept.


	5. Chapter 4: Alex and The Creeper

**Chapter 4: Alex and the Creeper**

**Brimstone Asylum**

**Front desk**

**1996**

Damien came close to the front of the asylum. He pulled out his new Beretta; checking the ammo before sliding it back into the weapon. Even with his few experiences with these monsters, he had hoped; no, he wanted to be used to them. Their decaying flesh and the sharpness of their teeth and claws gave him goosebumps just to think of them. The chance of running into more of them scared him.

He was usually a stoic man before coming here; now he felt like a mouse that was once a lion. The strong nerve he previously felt through his life, the source of his courage to fight for himself stand up to his father, was turned to brittle. To overcome this fear felt so implacable, Damien wondered if it was even worth trying to find James.

"Come out; come out where ever you are!" Damien said. He was still trying to convince himself he could make it through this; all he needed was a little courage.

Finding the way through the asylum was tricky work enough. Lights were almost completely out. When he was in Clarke's office, the lights were half out, and most of the hallways were in darkness. How he was supposed to find his way through the darkness was impossible to understand. Then there was the matter of the zombies, the zombies coming at him right now. They limped through these halls with gradual pace, while Damien watched them come at him; foaming at the mouth with drool mixed with blood dripping down from their hands and face. They were as repulsive as the rest of their kind roaming around aimlessly. To Damien it was sickening to look upon them all.

"Well if it isn't the freaks to peeve me just by breathing and manage to look like crap just by walking and moaning." Damien sneered while hoisting his pistol up. Damien hesitated before his fingers retightened on the handle of his gun; and he pulled the trigger three times. The shots all scored hits in the chest, and still they did not die.

"What the hell," Damien cursed to himself in the best way he could while trying not to make himself sound like a complete fool. He was so confused. The first zombie he encountered; it could be took down with a single stab, but it was to the head, so maybe the best way to go about this was by aiming for the head. To be sure, Damien took a few more shots at the zombie he shot first. It eventually went down, but only after half of the clip was used up.

"Headshots it is then," Damien said, having the sentiment in mind. He already had a deficient amount of ammo, thanks to Clarke, and needed to make every shot count. The gun was fired and the bullets quickly find their mark in the other zombies' skulls. One-by-one the zombies fell to his aim while moving through the halls. During the early teen years, most of his time was spent among these renegade militia groups his father associated himself with. The gun shows were the only upside to hanging around those southern ass-holes for so long. There he received some of his first training in using firearms, something he found solace in. Now he could use guns better than most folks who don't serve in the military. Suppose it was good for something after all, and was not suffered for nothing.

"Come on you ugly sons of bitches; is that all you got!? I've seen dying dogs with more fight in 'em than all of you combined!" Damien taunted the zombies as he fired at their heads. His courage was back with a vengeance, and he had no problem taking on the ones that stood in his way. His morale was at a zenith, and he did not want to go back to the low point he found himself in before.

Any zombies that came close to him, Damien jabbed the knife in their heads and resumed shooting down the others. They were like melons for target practice and he was the kid with his new rifle; though, he was using a pistol instead of a rifle and it was easy as hell to hit them all for most of the trip forward in this asylum of the damned. The zombies did, however, make good bullet fodder.

Coming through, and checking some of the bodies, Damien took notice to a few of the faces in the crowd. David, and a few other patients in the asylum, was among those he put out of their misery. It was a sad thing, for Damien to see them all like this. Sure they were in a crazy bunch, but they were good people all the same. David was one of the closest things he had to a friend in this mad house, and now he was gone. There was a piece of him that was going to miss him, because he felt a tear trickle down on his face. If he had known the others a little better, maybe Damien would have been more heartbroken to see them.

"Sorry, David; At least your finally out of this dump, like y'all always wanted." Damien said. He was trying to make some attempt at a last goodbye with his friend, and it was just not as good as he could have done. With Sarah, he would have buried her on the spot and put up the biggest epitaph he could find; but she was not here and risking his life just for a burial seemed to risky for him to take the chance. This was about survival not being humanly emotional, even if it would still eat at him as he left David there.

Soon, Damien came close to the storage area near the front desk, where his crossbow should be, and zombies were to be found dead on the spot. The corpses died from a single cut to the head, with a sharp blade, combined with blunt force trauma. They were all killed with a single tomahawk tap to the top of the head. It was as Damien had predicted; the man with the tomahawk was killing zombies off and making his chances of survival greater. Damien could tell, the people who worked up front had either left early or joined the walking corpse brigade, from what was left of the scene.

It was quite a strange thing actually; a psych ward with a storage room for weapons. Any other place, the staff would give weapons either to the patient's family or to the police. This one was the exception. It was possible they could have needed a fall back plan if there was ever a situation where they had a riot on their hands.

True to form, the storage area had Damien's crossbow but not much else. It was a hunting cross bow; a Stryker Strykezone 380 crossbow that Jon and Oliver gave him as a graduation present; holding it again after nine months felt so good, for Damien. The only thing it could be beaten by was seeing or holding his daughter, Jennifer. He was a tad of disappointed though by the rest of storage contents. There were some hopes, along the way, that he would find more weapons, like an assault rifle or a rifle. Instead he found his crossbow and the bolts with a few rare clips someone left behind when they were cleaning out the place. He was robbed of any other help he could get by some looter that was not Clarke, and would have to fend for himself on route to Brimstone with just a few bolts and two hands full of clips for his pistol.

"Son of a bitch," he cursed to whatever absent looter did this. Already he was thinking of the hundred of ways he could make them suffer for beating him to the punch. "What kind of low down punk robs the storage room of a psych ward before the patient can?"

It was a good question, one of many as of late, and one he put the most thought into. The deputies didn't do it, as they were robbed of all their weapons; Clarke was held up in his office with pistol ammo until the tomahawk monster came for him; and that left only the zombies that were wandering the halls for a meal, so they were obviously excluded. He wanted to know why this happened; why he was the only one here who survived and was there a connection to Umbrella and their experiment in Brimstone. There was only one way to find out, and he had to leave the asylum to initiate the first step of finding out. Even if this place was probably the safest place in the bayou, it was probably just as dead quiet; the bayou could not be any more dangerous or any less.

One last thing inside caught his attention; a body in the room. This one was different from the others. It had to be one of the more strangely dressed people in the building. It had the same H.C.F. logo as Emil did. On the body was a small hand-held radio, and it was still going on. A voice was heard saying with an irritated tone. Damien took the radio off the body, after putting a bullet into the skull to make sure it stayed dead, and presses on one of its buttons.

"This is Ada Wong to all Hive/Host Capture Force, all remaining teams in the area respond. I have more of these "things" on my tail, and I'm not sure how much longer I can last out here. If anyone can hear this, respond." The woman's voice in the box could be heard saying. This was the same voice, Damien heard Emil talking to when he was being sprung from his cell.

Pressing a finger on the respond mechanism, Damien replies "Your friends aren't going to call you back, their indisposed." The voice of the woman waited to reply; probably considering her options now that her people were gone.

"Who is this?" she finally responded.

'About damn time' Damien thought to himself. Then he says "This is Damien Snow. I'm the one your friend, Emil was trying to spring free before he became chowder for whatever those things are. I remember hearing you before he woke me up! "

"So he's dead too; crap. There goes my chances of having an easy ride out of here" Ada said on her end of the radio conversation. She was not so much angry that her team was gone but she was alone in the unfortunate circumstances they found themselves in. "I was hoping he was on his way here with you."

"Why was Emil supposed to bring me back?" Damien asked; for someone to be going through all this trouble over little old him sounded so stereotypical of a chosen one saga. He could not understand why someone wanted anything with him.

"My employers were interested in having you extracted before things went Defcon five. They were not very particularly talkative about the why part."

"You can get me out here?" Damien was suddenly excited. The prospect of a way to get the hell out of here was quite the opportunity of a life time. He may not have known this woman but he did not care, and he was still worried about finding James, so he would have one last problem to deal with and asks "Where are you?"

"I'm in the Town of course, where else would I be?" she responded. She was rushing to end the conversation, and Damien wanting to make good of the next few seconds says "I'm on my way, but before you hang-up I need to ask, have you seen a guy named James Vincent?"

"Sorry, haven't seen him." Ada said; then she hangs up on her end.

Putting the radio away in his back pocket, Damien grabs a flashlight that was still on the body, and he starts to walk towards the front door. Stepping out of that asylum was like leaving a prison, after so many decades of confinement. Damien could feel the fresh air of freedom as he made the first step out. No longer did he feel like someone's prisoner, no longer was he the bitch of this psych ward.

**Outside the Asylum**

The outside of the asylum a graveyard of cars; a bone yard of police cruisers, vans and pickup trucks dragged on for miles down the road. Zombies were wandering among the graveyard, looking for a new victim among the cars containing corpses on the inside of them. They were about to find out, Damien, was not such easy prey.

Damien took cover behind one of the abandoned cars, smelling the bile of the wild life. Brimstone had been built in the deepest parts of the Louisiana bayous, far from major cities like the largest city, New Orleans, and the capital, Baton Rouge. So nature has a larger hold on the area than man; it was one of those remote places in the world where progress had not yet encroached itself.

"What died out here," Damien complained. He had seen his fair share of wilderness, while hunting in areas outside of Tall Oaks, and had even some in Louisiana, but this smell was beyond terrible thing. It was like the stench of death was imbued in the air; like the macabre smell inside the asylum tenfold. "Smells like someone set a bunch of dead men, covered in crap, on fire.

He could have used the flashlight, to see in the dark, but Damien didn't need it. It was a just in case item. On his own, Damien was fine with the darkness. Damien, growing up, always had a knack for strange abilities. He had an aptitude for seeing in the dark, by adjusting to it quicker, more than most normal people could. His reflexes were slightly enhanced, but only enough to stay ahead of most humans with no advanced training.

Using the car trunk like a notch, Damien aims his crossbow for the zombie closest to him. One next to it was beginning to turn around to investigate the source of the noise. Damien grabs his knife and stabs the zombie in the back of the head before it has the chance to see him. The crossbow and knife were the perfect tools for the horror scenario he found himself in. Both were silent killers that could not attract attention with a kill, even if they missed, while the guns were very loud.

The zombies remained unaware of his existence, while Damien pulled his bolt out of the zombie's head, and moved about their usual business. He was able to pear a glimpse, before each move, from a corner on the cars. Any one near the corner, he grabs it and stabs its head before stashing it under a car. Slowly, he has to move for the most part, until a distant noise caught the attention of the walking dead. Small arms gunfire was the loud and thundering noise sending the zombies going in the opposite direction of Snow. Soon he could hear assault rifles going off.

Looking over from the car, he was hiding behind, Damien could see the source of the thundering noise, a death squad moving down the streets, killing zombies and not taking names. Whoever these people were, they were pros; moving quickly and effectively. This obscure team moved in a tightly compact formation while taking down the zombies. The uniforms they wore were no United States military issue. They looked black, with black helmets on their heads, and each of them wore gas masks. It was clear they were not any rescue team, like Clarke was wanting; they were shooting at anything that even moved. The leader of them was even heard saying "Kill them all!"

Putting his crossbow on his back, Damien made a break for it. He was not sure if these men wanted to kill him or not, but there was no room for error in this, and he could not take the chance. Without knowing if the monster with the tomahawk is in the area, or not, he had to be extra careful. While running, he passed some of the zombies, and one of those squad members shoots at him. The nearest zombies were killed, all except for one that was lucky enough to survive and attacks Damien; biting him on the upper part of his right arm.

"Mother fucker," Damien cursed, very volatile like. He was struggling to get the thing off as it bit into his arm; while he was moving back into a street rail. Bumping into it knocked the two over and off the street and both fall into the rapid river. Falling down into the river, Damien could be heard yelling "Son of a bitch!"

Falling in this rapid river made the zombie let go, releasing its tenacious grip, as the current sucked them up and beat them around on the trip down stream. Damien could hardly breathe; trying to keep his head above the water level almost killed him. The rocks hitting him did not help much either. He could see nothing but the filthy bayou water that consumed him. Aside from the thrashings, the only other worry Damien had, besides another zombie, was a crocodile. Dying in the jaws of one of those reptilian river runners was the only thing that could possibly beat being eaten up by dead men.

Eventually the river slows up. The thrashings began to waver, and Damien could feel himself wash-up on a boggy shore. His luck, if there ever was any, wore out as the river did on his way into the shore. He faintly hears the zombie who bit him gagging on water as he saw it getting up on the shore, near Damien's feet. Already, it was crawling towards him with its broken arm and leg.

'Screw it' Damien thought to himself. There was no more point to fighting anymore; he had been bitten so odds were stacked against him more than ever. He had no more fight left in him and he was tired as could be. He fought his way out of the asylum; come close and yet so far for nothing. Every part of his body felt like it was put through a fender bender. All he could to as move his head up. Looking over at the crawling zombie, Damien yells "COME ON! COME AND GET ME YOU BRAINLESS WENDIGO! I'M NOT AFRAID OF YOU; NOT ANYMORE!"

Damien did not make a prayer; go through the stages of grief, or anything. If he was going to die, he was not going to spend his final moments praying to someone he never begged to in his life. He never used God for solace, only the source of one question: why?

He waited for the zombie to come at hit. Suddenly a tomahawk hit the zombie in the head, and it fell down on its chest dead. Damien saw the monster, from the asylum, walk past him and retrieve his tomahawk from the corpse's skull. He was not entirely sure whether to be scared or sad. It was a moment of conflicting ambivalence. Then he could see it walk up to him and he lies back down.

Now Damien could see two monsters; the one with a tomahawk, and a second one that also wore a trench coat.

This new creature was more of a humanoid monster than its compatriot. The coat it wore was more like a 19th century duster; it was a dark brown color. There was a Stetson hat on the dead, like one a scarecrow in the fields would have. Damien had a close up of the heavy boots it wore on the feet. The skin was mottled grayish-green. Wing-like mandibles and skin flaps were seen on the face. When its mouth opened, you could see the sharpest of teeth to be seen, and no voice was heard. All it made with its mouth was a loud snarl.

The creature with the man holding onto the Tomahawk looked down at Damien. It felt like the thing was looking right through him. Eyes of the blackest shade of black looked at him with the evil glare of a demon. This thing was definitely more humanoid, but it was more like a monster. It was a humanoid-monster.

"Jeepers, a Creeper and his best buddy, shut mouth." Damien insulted them; treating this bravado as his last act of defiance before his death. The new creature did not take kind to the comment or the label he gave them. It snarled looking down at Damien like he was its next meal. It probably would have, and the other one would have let it, if it had not been for a raucous voice.

"Deadpool, Creeper; both of you knock it off!" the voice ordered them away from Snow. It surprised him greatly when both of them backed away and made way for this man to walk between them. He had blond hair, with grey eyes that reminded Damien of his own. The man was dressed like a scientist, wearing a white lab coat.

"So you're it; the one I've been waiting for. How longs it been, nineteen years now?" the man spoke to Damien with familiarity and yet he did not know who this man was. Suddenly the man's grey eyes glow a bright red as he said "Welcome home, Damien Snow. I've been expecting you!"

**Military Bunker**

**Interrogation Room**

**1999**

Finishing with the first mile stone of his story, Damien was once again interrupted by Adam. Questioning him once again about some events just explained.

"So Ada Wong was in Brimstone when this occurred?" Benford asked. Damien looked up to the question. The whole time he had been telling the story; Damien was toying with his restraints for some reason, and now was forced to stop. He was very hesitant to acknowledge Ada's involvement in his escape from Brimstone. She did so much to him through that, and she was his friend. Damien knew about her involvement with Umbrella employees, and if the government was asking him about her they must have wanted to know where she was, so he did not want to give her up. Still he knew he would take another beating and they would find out eventually. If there was a will then there was a way.

"Yeah, Ada was there. If it wasn't for her, I would have died out there." Damien said, doing his best to make her sound more like a less of a threat than they probably believed her to be. Inflating the truth was not something the government would have a problem with doing. They never had a problem with getting their hands dirty before. Damien was still curious why they were asking about her. "Why do you want to know about Ada so much?"

"We are not interested in just her. This is all about Brimstone." Adam replied, while pulling out a list of names. "Everyone on this list was a survivor of the outbreak in Raccoon city. Each of them ID'd Ada being present during the event. She was the girlfriend of a man named John, who was labeled as a rebellious employee, and we believe she may have more knowledge on Umbrella than we have now. We want to know what she knows."

Damien was unsure what to make of that. He never knew of this "John" man. Ada never mentioned to him before, so he must have come along sometime after. All Snow could do was shrug his shoulders and say "Sorry; can't help you much there."

Adam sighs before putting the paper away and says "It's not important any way. Let's move on to the fact that you mentioned two monsters and a man with glowing red eyes. Who was he?"

"I heard one of his men call him Alex." Damien replied. Of course there was no way he could have known how else to explain his predicament since he knew two Alex's. Adam seemed to have them mistaken as he said "Alex, the same Alex who's been vouching for you?"

"Of course not, that Alex; it was another Alex." Damien tried to help Adam understand to no avail. It had been some time since he gave merit to deserve the wrath of Rupert's fist, and now Rupert was itching for another punch. Before he did, Damien tried to calm him down. "Rupert, please don't doing anything you're going to regret later."

Rupert moved in for the punch, ignoring Damien's warning. Damien suddenly pulled the restraints off and used them like a brass knuckle. The thing was he spent every second in that room doing nothing but talking, and used the time to pick at the cuffs he found himself in. Using his new tool for a quick fight, Damien punched Rupert once in the face before grabbing the back of his nearest shoulder and banged his head on the table to disorient him. Bringing Rupert back up, by pushing forward on the same shoulder, Damien trips the back of one leg and lifts him up by grabbing the torso with both hands and then pushes him to the ground.

In a matter of seconds, Rupert was floored. Damien did it with such proficiency that Adam would have thought it was something his brothers could have taught him, but he doubted it was something they taunt soldiers. This move was more than likely one of many skills he developed on his own, for self defense.

Adam was still shocked, even after it happened. He took the hunter for a redneck buffoon who was just lucky during a few outbreaks. Neither the reports in his file or the information given by his fellow survivors from Rockfort Island hinted Damien displayed having physical training, other than a few militia gun shows when he was a few years younger. Maybe they lied? He could not have foreseen such a thing from him; nor could he have expected what happened next.

The guards in the room aimed their side arms on Damien, without hesitation, after he floored Rupert in an instant. Damien looked at them with a smirk, and something in his eyes sent a chill up their spines, before looking over to Adam once more.

"And about the monster thing…" He trailed off from his sentence, and his eyes began to change from grey to dark red before glowing. "Everyone has a little bit of a monster in them." Then Damien's eyes went back to grey.

Once again the door to the interrogation room opens up abruptly. Leon, an agent in training and a known friend of Claire's, stepped into the room with his pistol drawn. He was a blond headed man with blue eyes and a very alpha male voice.

"Adam, get back!" he ordered the Adam; who had been interrogating Damien for who knows how long. The pistol was aimed at Damien's forehead, but Snow paid it no attention, as Adam backed away from the desk. Leon quickly turns his orders to Damien "Snow, put your hands on behind your head and get on your knees!"

"Take it easy Kennedy!" Damien said, while slowly pulling his hands up. Putting his hands behind his head, Damien stands on his knees, following Leon's order to the letter. Leon motioned one of the guards to put cuffs on Damien, and after they were done Adam ordered them to have a doctor examine his blood and then put in a cell.

Adam also made the order "No rough housing him. Only use force when necessary!"


	6. Chapter 5: Get Back the Crossbow

**Chapter 5: Get Back the Crossbow**

**Military Bunker**

**Damien Snow's cell**

**1999**

Damien was sitting in the quietness of his cell, all alone. After Adam had Damien checked by the doctors, he was thrown in this cell to wait until someone came and spoke with him. His only means of soothing the extreme boredom, that accompanied being in this horrible room, was the old lighter Adam had brought to him. The flicker of his lighter was all to be heard in the quiet cell.

This cell Damien found himself in was not the usual bars. He had become accustom to seeing several lone bars in the regular cells of jails, but this one was not the same. It had a glass to contain him in the room, with four small holes allowing oxygen to come in. The glass keeping Damien locked up, from the outside, was made of Plexiglas. They must have not felt safe leaving him in a regular cell and decided to make a cell using bulletproof glass instead. Walls were made of the same material as normal cell walls, a three-by-three.

His fingers flicker the lighter open and shut again, and again, and again. The lighter had no capacity to make fire anymore; this was just to pass time. It was left over from years ago, when his Uncle, Tom was fighting in Vietnam. The bad habit was picked up from James, when Damien was a little boy, and now he used this old habit to kill time.

"God, I'm so bored." Damien uttered to himself in the dark. His eyes were back to their usual grey, but all the other talents he retained from gaining this trait were still active. He could hear the heart beats of the hundreds of guards and agents in the building, as well as some of the conversations nervous guards were having from ten to twenty feet away.

"I don't see why Benford and Kennedy want to keep this freak alive. It's more trouble than it's worth. We should just put a bullet in his head and be done with it!" One of the MP's was heard saying before being berated by his superior for even suggesting such insubordination.

If there were any soldiers guarding this special cell before, they had placated themselves from the premises. The fear this power generated onto people left Damien in marvel and annoyance as it kept others at a distance. The first time he exposed his powers to Claire, she and the others treated him like he was a monster no better than Albert Wesker. He hated this feeling it gave him, the feeling of not being wanted. People, that he called his friends, were so afraid of him that you would have thought they saw the devil himself.

Down the halls, Damien could hear footsteps approaching his cell. Casual steps were all he could hear as he flickers his lighter open and close in a constant rhythm. The blond agent, Leon was the one coming to pay him a visit. Closing the lighter firmly, Damien looks to the glass of his cell and says "Well, just when I thought my day could not get any more demeaning, they send in Claire's other boyfriend to interrogate me! You government people take the phrase cruel and unusual punishment to a whole new level."

Leon let a small crack of a smug look form on his face. He found the young, former cynic, man to be a likeable character. Claire told him enough about Snow to make him somewhat curious to understand what personality he possessed.

"First off, I'm not her boyfriend!" Leon corrected him. "Secondly, Claire mentioned you being a strange kind of taste. A bunch of kids from Raccoon city, a cop who served for only one day, and a former convict; she sure has a misfit collection of friends!"

"What do you want, Agent Leon?" Damien asked as he put the lighter away, deep, in his pocket and then stands up from his bed. He was not going to screw around and waste what precious time he had on him.

Kennedy made the expression that he was surprised Damien knew his name; Damien in kind gave him a smug expression "That's right, I know you, Leon Scott Kennedy! Claire told me a bit about you during her stay at that piss hole of a prison!"

Snow was a different man than he was back in 1996. Sure he was still a little volatile, but he had better people skills than he did back then. Even when he spoke to Leon with such a smug tone, he still showed Leon some respect to a fellow survivor. Skills for survival were admirable to Damien, and the way Claire spoke of Leon made him a little more respectable of the agent, even if he was a former blue boy. There was however the occasional chill that ran up Leon's spine whenever he looked Damien in the eyes.

Based on the psychological profile Adam had put together on Snow, Leon knew a few things about him. None of them could ever give him as much insight as he thought it did. Damien's angry, dark, doesn't feel safe, never has, and doesn't know what to do about it. He wishes so much he could control his demons, instead of having his own demons control him as they plagued him through most of his life. Snow is a wandering soul; he's lost, alone.

"I wanted to ask you something, Snow." Leon asked, as Damien had his back to him and looks to the wall. "What happened after you were captured? Did you escape make a break for Brimstone? Or did they take you to Brimstone?"

There was something about the way Leon was asking the question. He was dancing around some sensitive subject like it was a land-mine in danger of going off any second now. Damien had no way to know what it was figuring it out for himself, and he doubted Kennedy was just going to tell him.

"Why do you even care?" Damien asked Leon so coldly and with such a casual emotional distance. He had indeed forsake most of his cynical nature and views during his two year stint in the prison on Rockfort, but part of his gut told him Kennedy was after something else besides information.

Even if they only knew a small bit and pieces of bread crumbs about one-another, Damien could still tell Leon was a good person. However, having a good heart and good intentions mixed together with power was never a good combination. Damien knew from his studies in various religions and folklore that the combination was a straight-shot to the circles of the devil's fiery domain.

It was a dangerous concoction and Damien hated the idea of being near anyone mixing it together.

Leon was puzzled by the question himself. He obviously knew why he cared; he wanted to know about Ada's involvement in Brimstone. He was just not sure if Damien would share it with him.

For all he knew, Damien could have been close to Wong like he was, or more.

Leon was, to a degree, head over heels for the industrial and corporate Chinese spy; as part of the expression goes. Damien, to some extent, had a similar feeling only not as romantic as Leon's notion.

It was doubtful Damien was in love with Ada. At the time of the outbreak in Brimstone, he would have still been mourning the death of Sarah. Grief could have led him to seek some comfort but not a new woman to replace the dead one. Damien was nothing like that, at all. It was even harder for Leon to picture Ada falling for Damien.

Still the doubts did not stop the idea from popping in Kennedy's mind.

Could they have had a thing; a fling; a one-night-stand; a hookup? Insecurities pilled upon piles of one another in Leon's mind.

The thought of it disgusted Leon to no end, and made him want to hurt someone, but he also knew it was unfair to Damien or Ada. Besides, Snow had too much respect for Ada to view her that way, and had finally moved on from the death of Sarah, and had come to care for someone that was not Ada: Claire Redfield.

"Maybe I just want to know what happened." Leon suggested in an attempt to get Damien's confidence or a safe level of trust.

"You're lying!" Damien called the agent out on his deception. He may have had his back to Kennedy, but he could still hear his heart beat. One way his step-father could always tell when Damien was lying was by feeling his back or chest for a heart beat; or he would check the pulse in his arm.

Leon was chilled to the bone that he could tell. Damien looked back at him with his eyes morphed into their dark red color.

Was my voice that obvious? Leon thought to himself. He had no idea how he could possibly have known. Remaining frozen still on his side of the glass, as Damien walked towards with each step at a slow pace. Finally, Leon spoke up, while faking a pose of confidence and a façade that he was not afraid, while deep down he was terrified "How would you know? It's not like I'm strapped to a lie detector!"

"Funny thing about this progenitor virus in my system; it enhanced everything. My sight, my smell and even, yes, my hearing. They were always a bit more effective than the average human senses, but now I'm even better." Damien gloats his edge to Leon, still angry at him for failingly trying to deceive him. "Heart beats have a particular beat to them, and usually when someone lies they get nervous, and when they get nervous the heart beat picks up."

Damien did not bother to berate him for the lies, only to deduct what the agent was after.

Thinking about what was said in the interrogation room; Damien once again took a crack at what Kennedy could have to gain from this.

Adam asked about Ada consistently, and about the monster he saw…and then there was a pause in his thinking, and of course Ada would be at the center of the reason. Claire told him how Leon spent a margin of the outbreak in Raccoon city sweating over Ada.

Not that he could blame him, but now he had some idea of the position he was in here.

"You want to know about Ada, like the rest of them." Damien accused him. He just wanted to see his response, and the look on Leon's face told him everything he needed to know. "I thought so; Claire told me about you and her, I just wasn't sure if that was your reason for asking me that—now I have the answer!"

"I just want to know what my friend was doing there!"

Leon's defense did him no good. It had a brittle backbone and fell apart in seconds. Damien could use this personal connection to toy with Leon. Kennedy was not there worried about his friend, he was wondering if a woman he had feelings for jumped another man's bone.

"Well, that was a load of crap." Damien jested with an insult.

If this had been any other person, Damien would have picked at his mind. He could have tricked Leon into opening the cell, but that would have been rude to do, seeing as how Leon was Claire's friend. Finally after sharing a cold stare with the agent on the other end of the glass, Damien shrugs his shoulders and says "I didn't meet up with Ada until we reached the outside of the Brimstone town!"

"We?" Leon asked, puzzled to know of someone other than Damien survive the outbreak.

Sitting back down, with his eyes back to normal, Damien explains it to him "After those freaks found me, Alex had one of his men drag me to their hideout for testing."

**Brimstone wilderness**

**Bayou Cave**

**1996**

"Wintergreen, carry him back to the base." The man with the glowing eyes said. The next thing Damien knew, he was in a cave with someone poking and prodding at his bite wound. Pain Damien could never have imagined, in his entire life, was inflicted for a long duration of time before the shock of it made him pass out. They looked at this would with fascination, like it was the greatest discovery in the history of science.

Damien still couldn't believe he saw those glowing eyes. It was like staring down a hellhound again. Only instead of a big black dog with red eyes that moved faster than a bullet, he saw a man with red eyes. The laws and rules of what is real and what is not have been turned on their hinges and made topsy-turvy.

Wintergreen, the man who carried Damien into the hideout, could never been seen as he moved around. By the time the eighteen year old regained consciousness, the grunt disappeared into the dark shadows of the complex.

It was like the lair of a witch doctor in some creepy movie.

Becoming aware of his surroundings, Damien found himself in caverns that only had the occasional lanterns on the wall for visibility in this dark place. Even with them, it was like being in the opposite of a lighthouse, it was a dark house.

The marching steps of boots could scarcely be heard in the caverns.

Creeper, the scarecrow figure, spent a stint looking over Damien before it too disappeared into the shadows with Deadpool and Wintergreen.

Great, just great; Damien sarcastically thought. He was basically out of one nightmare of zombies and into another of monstrous creatures that were the things of horror movies. The situation went past the borderline of bothersome, and Damien felt nothing but the wish to leave as soon as possible. For him it warranted Snow to follow the desire strongly, and follow it close to the letter with no other way for interoperations.

Escaping could not be too problematic for Damien. Deadpool walks by every five minutes, while Creeper and Wintergreen were not seen again. Though, eventually, Deadpool stopped dropping by to checkup and make sure Damien was still immobile.

"Alex, we have a secure line with Lord Spencer. He's requested speaking with you immediately!" one of the soldiers could be heard saying.

The man with the glowing eyes responded to the name Alex, it must have been his name and he must have been the one in charge of things here.

Alex responded to the soldier's news with an "Excellent," He treated it like an expected call from a relative not spoken to in years. "Patch him through!"

Damien felt the pain in his body seethe while trying to get himself up from the crude excuse slab Alex had him placed on. Looking to right arm, he was expecting to see a grotesque bite wound. He looked where the zombie bit him only to see bite marks that was greatly healing up.

"What the hell?" Damien whispered the question to himself, dumbfounded at the astonishing development. He was always quick to rejuvenate injuries, usual a few days shorter of most guys, and now his body was healing up fresh wounds in hours or even seconds.

Pain that was once so unbearable to stand was erased from existence. The arm felt peachy keen and dandy, like the bite never occurred before. In fact, the only trace of blemish form of an uncomfortable feeling to be found was a headache, Damien was having. The migraine was sudden and vanished as quickly as it came to be.

For a brief moment, after the headache vanished, Damien felt his eyes warming up. He was truly unaware as his grey peepers' morphed dark red and then blazed a bright red before the coloration was grey once more.

When his eyes turned back to normal peeper grey, Damien sees his hallucination of Sarah had returned. She was becoming something of a recurring shock that has the capacity to kill with a simple heart attack.

"Get up, Damien," the wraith whispered its order, or suggestion, to Snow as he gets up from the crude slab. "Keep it quiet, too."

Damien was partial to following the route of sanity, which was far from the realm of possibility of talking with a figment of his imagination, so he was really starting to wonder if he was in his right mind, at the moment. It was, however, a good shift from the usual routine of this thing attacking him, or making him feel bad about the real Sarah dying.

Her advice was noted, and accepted as the best suggestion Damien had presently. His crossbow, pistol and knife were confiscated after they brought him in. All that remained was the clothes on his back, and his legs and feet.

Stealth would be his only option of a weapon, and the various shadows, in this place, would be his only resource. Damien could not afford to be seen, even once; so each transition of cover had to be perfectly quick and to go unnoticed.

The pain in his arm and head may not be a crucial issue for him, anymore, but, Damien felt the senses of his body and it feels like one big structure built of nothing but soreness and was dedicated to the effect of soreness. Taking even one step or inch of a move made the sore body ache everywhere and the sore limb would sting the most.

Forcing him to move his feet, harder with each step along the way, Damien and the imaginary Sarah used the shadows and some local crates for cover. Along the way, Alex could be heard talking to his men; ordering them to ready a connection with this "Lord Spencer" he was so eager to speak with.

"Alex; do you hear me, Alex?"

The voice coming in, through the radio, sounded like an elder British man. Based on his conduct of speaking, Damien would have guessed Spencer was of a wealthy upper class up-brining.

First, Alex tapped on a microphone, and then secondly says into it "I hear you, Lord Spencer. We have an update on test subject 14!"

Alex was still excited about his findings. Damien could hear it in his voice.

"What have you found, Alex?"

Spencer coughed with every sentence he made from his end; it could be heard in the radio static. His health could be declining in his, ever advancing, old age. This did not stop Alex from maintaining his excitement.

"I've taken samples of Snow's blood. He was already bitten and exposed to the virus when we brought him in."

"What have you found to be so excited about? You sound like a chubby boy entering a candy-store."

"His body is not just healing the wound at an accelerated pace; it is also fighting the T-virus in his system. Some of his cells and anti-bodies are even absorbing it. For all know, Spencer, Damien could be developing an immune system to our little plague!"

Spencer took a moment for pause; his coughs in the radio static could still be heard on his end with moving paper. Indeed this was fantastic news to the both of them and they would greatly benefit from this sudden development.

Spencer then compliments the man with genuine glee "Very good, Alex; My devoted disciple, you have once again brought White Umbrella in a new level of success!"

Damien remained in his hiding spot long enough to hear Alex say he had taken pints of blood for study, and written down all his research on notes for future study. Then he could be heard mentioning that it was all being loaded up on his helicopter. After that, Damien had enough of listening to this snore-fest of intellectual exchanges between these two old geezers over the radio. It was a miracle he didn't want to blow his brains out from the boredom of it all.

"I need to get my crossbow back!" Damien told himself while sneaking around.

Alex's men, the soldier buffoons running around in the cave, look like the death squad Damien witnessed executing the zombies, in droves, outside the asylum. There was only one kind of visible logo on the uniforms they wore such a intimidating look to them; a circle cut into fours, like a pie in some math problem; half of these four pieces were one of two colors: red and white. Any colors to be the same were put in the opposite position of each other.

Damien did not know they were Umbrella; all that was known to him was that these people were his kidnappers and he already hated them more than he did the zombies. He saw two of them toying with the radio used for talking with Ada.

The superior, commanding, officer was questioning the one holding the radio. "Anything else salvageable, Sergeant?" he asked raucously.

Damien watched, from afar, while the conversation unfolds. The room the soldiers were standing next to; the appearance of it had Snow thinking it a storage room, or armory, and was hoping his gear was inside.

"Afraid not, sir; we had tried deceiving Wong, then the second one of our people spoke up, she severed all contact. Now, we just get radio silence for a response when contacting her." The underling soldier replied to the higher rank with a nervous voice. If they had not tried to kill him earlier, or caused implausible pain by poking into his still-open wound, Damien might have felt sorry for the underling. They were, basically, like regular military soldiers.

Damien was raised on knowledge of how the U.S. military system, and other militaries throughout history, worked; and in the military soldiers, depending on the rank and position, sometimes, have to play kiss up no matter how demeaning it feels.

"They always say and act with that "with all due respect" manner, such a polite way to replace the kiss their ass attitude." Damien whispered the joke, with a snigger, to himself and his hallucination. It was the repeating and revised version of an old joke step-uncle Tom once told. Sarah reacted to the joke with a grudging smirk as it realized what he was talking about.

After having this very disappointed and frustrated sigh made, the superior officer does his best to be as empathetic understanding as possible. "Understood, Sergeant; stash this piece of shit then return to your post; we still have to deal with Archangel!" he was heard giving gentle older to the underling and walks off and out of view.

The sergeant opens the nearby door and walks inside. Damien grabs the square edge door, with barely any room left for his fingers to fit in, before it could be fully shut. Sarah would follow quickly behind him. It treated his, poorly thought out, plan like it was the worst plan ever.

"What are you doing, Damien? If this is your idea of a plan, it's a terrible plan; this has got to be the worst plan in the history of plans, and believe me there have been a lot of them!"

Damien waited until the door was, completely, shut closed. Once it was, he looked for something to knock the sergeant out with, while ignoring the Sarah criticism. Much to his delight, this room was storing his gear. Looking at the familiar possessions, Damien could see his hunting knife and reaches out for it.

While the sergeant puts the radio down near a jacket, Damien could not have helped but to notice how the jacket looks like one James owned and kept on him whenever he was not working. For this to be lying around here, something really bad must have gone down.

The sergeant turned around to walk back out of this storage, where weapons and supplies were kept, in this dump. His frontal vision only glimpsed Damien for a second, just one single second, before Snow punched him in the nose, hard. Then after pressing the sergeant against the wall, with a muffled mouth, Damien puts the blade of the hunting knife up to his throat with a threat to encourage some silence out of him. "Take one false move or shout and I will cut open your throat; after that, I'll search around the inside for your voice box!"

Snow's orders were firm and clear. He was dead serious about killing him, while the voice box bit was mostly for dramatic effect and to get the point across.

The Sergeant got the message loud and clear. He nods his head up and down in silent agreement.

Pulling his hand away from its muffling action, Damien keeps the knife steady and close to the neck in-case the man had a change of heart about the terms to them talking non-violently. Damien looks back to the jacket then forces the man to view it. "Now," he said, while maintaining restraint on his desire to beat the crap out of the guy for his friends trying to kill him earlier, and asks "This jacket is of a special kind; where did you get it?"

"Why do you care, freak?" Sergeant asked rudely, stalling for time and Damien gives a quick and hard thrust punch to break a rib or two, and replies "All you need to know is I consider this very valuable and it belongs to a close-acquaintance, so I suggest you start talking!"

There was no reason, Damien could think of, for someone to be calling him a freak. He was no Mr. Perfect, but he was no weirdo. It made him even madder; so for an even better example that he means business, Damien applies pressure and presses his hand on the rib he broke, and then hovers a new jeopardy to the man "I intentionally broke one rib, keep screwing around and there can be worse done, and believe me when I say there are far more painful things than one broken bone!"

Groaning in a deep pain, resulting from the broken rib, Sergeant nods his head again. "Alright, okay, I get the point; message received crystal clear." Damien took his hand off of the broken rib and relief for the pain.

Sergeant looked back up to Damien and was terrified by the murderous expression in his eyes and on his face. "We had this deserter a few days ago, before we started moving into here, and we found in his local home. I swear to god, I don't know what happened to him!"

He may have been scum but, Damien could tell sergeant was telling the truth. There might have even been consideration to simply knocking him unconscious, however, soon shadows were faintly seen in the crack beneath the door, and Sergeant was inhaling for the preparation to make a loud word; he never had the chance to let it out. Damien thrusts his knife into the man's throat, and he expires in seconds from blood loss. "Shit, shit, shit," Snow mumbled his curses repeatedly while gently lowering the body onto the cold hard floor.

Damien pulled himself up from the ground, while, putting his knife up and first grabs his pistol among the weapons. The Beretta 92fs was put back to his side before grabbing his crossbow. The crossbow is put to the side where he could get it later.

Damien took the jacket-coat from the cubed shelf it was on, and puts it on. The jacket was a conundrum for description; other than being black, with a hint of blue, he was not sure if it a bicker jacket or light jacket, whether it was made of leather or denim. It had a zipper that was never used. On the back of it had two red angel wings and on the upper part of the left sleeve was a circular emblem patch with a black ace of spades with a pair of angel wings and on the upper part of the right sleeve was a small line patch with a phrase on it.

The phrase was "Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil"

Fitting the jacket to straighten up, to where it went down just past his waist, Damien makes sure the clothes were on tightly before grabbing a pair of black fingerless gloves, found on the same shelf as the jacket, and once again takes crossbow into his hand to have it slung on the back of the right shoulder. He still keeps a hand on the strap while walking.

Any of his objects in his bag, which was brought to the room as well, were taken out and he places them in his pockets before readying to leave.

Damien only took look at the dead sergeant's body, feeling bad for killing him. The man would have called out for help, and they might have killed him, so Damien had no choice but to kill him. There was hardly any time for him to think of an alternative, but he still felt bad about taking a human life.

"Sorry sergeant, nothing personal. May you find peace with your god," he says to the corpse of his victim, before sneaking out of the storage room and finding himself a way out of the cave.


	7. Chapter 6: Survivor Camp

**Chapter 6: Survivor Camp**

**Brimstone Bayou**

**Hunting grounds**

**1996**

Damien trekked through the muddy swamp, smelling the dew of fresh morning, like the beginning to some epic story. He did not see himself an up-and-coming hero, he was no Frodo or Bilbo Baggins or Jon Snow. There was not going to be any collection of heroes to join him on a quest to destroy some great evil, he was in for the long haul alone.

He must be hoping that a humble view will give him better odds. It was his only hope for staying positive, which was not his strong suit. Calling Ada on the radio was fruitless; she was still trapped in the small town until he reached her.

These woods of the bayou were different from the hunting areas outside of Tall Oaks, and it was going to be tricky for him to find his way through. He felt like this was the piss end to the piss end of the south. Louisiana was never a perfect place, but its bayous could be the worst. It was old, dark and creepy. Brimstone was not an old location, like the city of New Orleans, though the history of it cuts deep to the major cities; patients at the asylum always like to gossip about the history of this county.

After Andrew Jackson won the battle of New Orleans in 1815, it was said the land, that would one day be Brimstone, was owned by a descendent of Philip Wharton, founder of the first Hellfire club of London in1719, Ethan Crane; often referred to as Count Brimstone, for his fascination with the stories surrounding Hell, purchased the land in June 5th 1829 to create a remained Hellfire club. He built a castle of a plantation to live in, the asylum for religious purposes and a town to attract new lambs for the slaughter. After his death, since he had no next of kin, the land was converted into public land and eventually a county was made, Brimstone County. The various other buildings Crane built were eventually abandoned and reclaimed by the wild or restored and recreated for public uses. Caves, where his followers would move through in secret, could still be found.

If Damien had to guess the cave, where he was Alex's guest for a few hours, was one such caves that have been lost for generations.

Alligators are everywhere and usually people can never see them until it's too late, unless their trapped by the swamp people. Alligator hunters made the bayou and hunting grounds into the reserve of their livelihood.

"I hate swamps!" Damien said to himself, half trying to keep him company. "Full of so many memories for so many people.

He'd pass by the occasional swap shacks where people in the bayou made and abandoned their ways of life for generations. It was a comfort Damien never had the leisure to. All his life was spent never used for building a life of his own, he was only being drawn into another and having what he wanted torn down and burned around him.

Searching through some of the many shacks, Damien had expected to find himself a hunting rifle or a shotgun at the very least; the place was picked clean, all of the swamp shack's resources' were robbed of their food and weapons. Another gamble for a survival edge was robbed of him by looters, and this time it was not Clarke.

"Not so bad, Damien; these people may live in the swamp, but at least they can be proud to know the lives they live are their own!" Sarah said. The wraith continued to hover over him after leaving the cave in haste.

"Don't you have a grumpy rich bum you should be making feel guilty?" Damien said while continuing to walk through an assortment of bayou muck and bile. "I've already got zombies and monsters to deal with, and I don't have time to contend with a ghost of my past with an annoying presence!?"

"Excuse me, I'm annoying? Did you have to give birth to some man's baby and then die as a result? I don't think so."

The wraith, instead of causing guilt, made Damien want to curse out the hallucination very loudly. He stared down the phantom, angrily, before saying "Shut the hell up, Kenobi!"

Damien grabs the hallucination by the collar. It was a physical and logical impossibility, yet she felt so real and life-like.

Sarah remained unmoved as Damien continued to berate it with anger "I don't know what you are, but you're not my Sarah; she would never say those things about our daughter, about Jennifer. So why don't you do me a favor and piss off!"

"I'd love to, Spooky, but you and I both know a conscience never rests." Sarah said. She was more like a source of annoyance, rather than fear anymore, and trails off while asking "What the old saying?" then the wraith changes from a woman into a man while finishing the statement. "No rest for the wicked."

The wraith turned in an older man, in his mid to late forties or in his early fifties. He had short blond hair, with a comb over that has the hair brushed back, and leaf green eyes. His facial hair was groomed just as well as his scalp. The attire it wore was a black business suit, like slender man, and polished shoes.

Seeing the new form, Damien releases his grip on the collar in shock and horror. The terror could be seen his grey eyes, clear as day. The first form of his hallucinations was bad enough but now it had him terrified in a way that the zombies and monsters could never reach.

"Father," Damien uttered, while fumbling back from the apparition, and nearly fell on his back in some muck.

The man was Michael, Michael Vincent. Damien's step father looks with a face of contempt, with scorn in his eyes, using the same despising and sadistic look he used for most of Damien's life. It was awful to see him again for so many years.

"Father, still clinging to that word after all these years?" Michael asks his step-son with a despondent tone. "A bastard, still desperate for a daddy,"

Damien once feared his step-father like Klaus Mikaelson would eventually fear Mikael, but for some reason he felt some courage build up when dealing with him this time "Great, just when I thought Sarah was as bad as it gets, now I have to deal with the monster that ruined our family."

Finally, having had enough of this brief vexation, Damien says "Screw this." Then he walks away from the confrontation with the hallucination. Michael follows behind Damien. He was still looking for some Snow torment and was not finished with him yet. He said, focusing on the coat "I seem to recall my older bum of a brother giving the jacket to the older disappointment."

Contact with Michael was always a volatile for Damien; so putting up with him in phantom form was a challenge magnified; still, the hallucination failed at being just like father. Michael and Tom hated each other, with a passion. When James was given the jacket by their uncle, Michael hardly noticed. He might have if Damien was given it, but not with James.

"Oh yes, my brother James and Uncle Tom. Both were always better men than you; never taking their problems out on a kid weaker than them!" Damien sarcastically responds to the ghost. Then finally the ghost was quiet.

Damien soon found himself in a more solid region of the hunting grounds. A few rabbits were seen scampering around nearby. Some zombies could soon be seen, all converging on one point in the area: a man with a sword that was cutting them down one by one.

Looking at the man with a bi-colored mask, that was half black and half yellow, Damien recognized the boulder of a man as Wintergreen, the man Alex had carry him into the cave earlier before. Snow was barely conscious at the time; he caught a small glimpse of him, but it was enough for Damien to remember

Wintergreen wore a black operational dress uniform and pants; as well as black gloves and boots. He wore a black flack vest over the uniform, that left little space around the arms as it compressed against the uniform but made moving the arms super easy. Damien could recognize it as a kind of uniform worn by military men for their day-to-day work or on special operations. The vest was not something he would normally see worn with it.

There was a scabbard strapped to the back, for his customized and modernized ninjato.

Wintergreen used the weapon effectively as he decapitated the zombie heads, or ran the blade through their skulls, as he was assisted more of the soldiers. Damien was not sure who to be more afraid of, the man with the sword or the men backing him up.

"Well, this is certainly a strange turn of events. Your only source of companionship is psychopaths with guns and swords." Michael says, while Damien replies "Shut up" before he takes cover behind some of the trees and sneaks around. Michael continues to follow him as he watches Wintergreen take out the zombies.

One zombie, Wintergreen grabs by the arm and throws it into the air before slicing it in half from the midway. Damien certainly did not relish the idea of having to fight him if he had the capacity to do that to a zombies; Damien could only imagine what Wintergreen does to normal people in a fight.

Eventually, Damien was able to put some distance between him and the soldiers. The gunfire could still be heard from a distance, as Snow and the hallucination came farther and farther from the source, and zombies were being killed in droves.

While moving, he could suddenly hear the pitter patter of dog paws stepping on leaves and he looks behind him to see a pack of monster dogs staring at him hungrily. They looked at one another before looking back at Damien and he says "Easy, easy now. Good doggies, good diseased, blood thirst, hell hound doggies."

The dog pack made a snarl at the retreating hunter, while he made small steps to back up, and finally they bark. "Seriously," Damien shouted before he began to run with the demon dogs in hot pursuit of him. He could hear the hell hounds ruffling through the grass and barking while they gave chase.

Damien could feel his heart pounding like a drum during this horror marathon. These things were faster than most dogs, even police ones, could be capable of; and if Damien had been a bit slower they would have caught him after a few minutes.

All those days spent on his school track team were good for something after all.

Hell hounds were hot on his trail, with a small distance separating them, for a good ten minutes before Damien finally slipped up on something in the ground and collided hard against another human being that was not a zombie.

The man Damien crashed into was you, probably in his late teens like he was, and completely pissed off once he saw who hit him so hard.

"Sum bitch," the boy was heard cussing as he, and Damien, starts to recover from the collision while his friends dealt with the Hell hounds. He must have thought Damien was attacking him, because he tackled Snow before the confused hunter could explain anything.

"It's one of the psychopaths!" the boy shouted to the others. "He's mine!"

Ben Peyton always had a temper to him with the raging hormones most teenagers have, and was never able to bring it under control, and was quick to act without ever thinking first. Once again he follows through the impulse and was fighting with a man he barely knew, only wanting to beat him up.

Damien dropped his crossbow in the scuffle and, without thinking to pull out the berretta, draws the hunting knife from its sheath. Ben made an attempt to hoist up a pistol of his own but Damien quickly kicks it out of his hand.

"Take it easy, Kid; I don't want to hurt you but I will if you force me to!" Damien tried so hard to talk him down, to no avail.

"That's very generous, coming from a homicidal maniac," Ben insulted Damien before charging him. "Now die, scum!"

Damien and Ben both went at each other with their knives. Snow felt the point to Ben's blade come close to his face, when the kid was able to get the upper hand in the struggle, before managing to kick Peyton off of him and when the boy came at him again; Damien thrusts the knife into his chest.

With the blade sticking deep into his chest, Ben struggled a moment, Damien was forced to look him in the eyes. He could see the life draining from the kid until it was finally over. When it was, Damien pulled the knife out of his chest and watches the body hit the ground. As he was putting his knife away, Damien felt sick to his stomach. Walking past the body, Damien says "Should have walked away," and begins to recover his crossbow. Soon, Ben's friends finished off the dogs, which were chasing Snow before, and ganged up on him.

Before he knew what hit him, Damien had two men holding him down on his knees. "Get the fuck off me, you bastards!" he said angrily to his captors. Then watches another man walk up and he breaks down upon seeing the body.

"Son of a bitch, you killed my boy!" the third man said before upholstering and aiming a .44 magnum to the forehead of Damien's skull. The man was furious was furious with a rage only a grieving father could know. Coming to realize the kid was this man's son; Damien was starting to regret killing him.

Things were going in such a bad direction that Damien was sure he was dead-meat. The men holding him down were encouraging "Logan" to get it over with and pull the trigger. The two men holding him down, Aiden and Luke were no stranger to violence and it made Damien wonder if they were not criminals themselves.

"Kill him already, Logan!" Aiden said in a hillbilly tone and Luke saying "Maybe we should torture him for information then kill him!" both were callous, but Luke was more open to possibilities than Aiden was.

"Or don't kill him at all!" Damien urges them for self-preservation in the form of a pun. All three look at him and say "shut up!" before Logan was once again considering whether to kill Damien or not. It went on until, suddenly, a voice was heard saying with a welsh accent "Peyton, take it easy!"

The next thing Damien sees is Wintergreen walk up with one sword in his hand and a second one on his back. Looking at the young hunter thinking he was playing them and decided to say something about it.

"Enjoying a game of double agent, Wintergreen?" he asked smugly before the man looked at him. The only part of his face that could be seen was his brown eyes looking through the holes in the mask.

The man quickly replies "My name is Wilson; and don't ever mix me up with that traitorous bastard again, or I'll punch you so hard you'll be spitting your teeth out like it was dip!" he was serious about the threat. Damien could hear it in his voice, clear as day.

It was then that Damien to a closer look at him and noticed the difference between Wintergreen and this man, other than having two swords; his ODU uniform and pants were grey instead of the black coloring he saw ten minutes ago. Wilson still had the same bi-colored mask, boots, gloves and vest as Wintergreen did but they were certainly not the same person.

Wintergreen was a grunt; he follows orders and kills without thinking twice about it. While Wilson here was more observant and cautious about dealing with his prisoners.

"Put the gun down, Logan. He's more useful to us alive than dead!" Wilson said. Logan was still fairly pissed about Damien killing his son, and wanted to kill him, but Wilson calmed him down. In the command structure, Wilson seemed to be the alpha leader of the group.

Wilson took one look at Damien then said "Put a bag over him." Aiden and Luke quickly put a bag over his head and all Snow could see was darkness.

**Military Bunker**

**Damien Snow's Cell**

**1999**

Coming back to the present, Damien felt his stomach rumble from hunger. He felt the accrue growl in his stomach, with a mild ache, actively move up and down his belly. The agitator feeling scratched on the inside of Snow's stomach for a few more seconds before finally stopping.

Damien had his mouth ajar until he finally had the strength to open his mouth a groan in the face "Hey, Kennedy, I'm starving over here! Can I get some food!?"

Leon lingered in a verbal response to the prisoner's request. He still desired to know what happened with Ada; he yearned for it like an addict desires some drugs. Part of Kennedy felt some pity for the young man. They both survived a nightmare that Umbrella caused.

Ultimately him empathy won the inner conflict; he relents and says "I'll be back in a minute, just wait right here."

'Like I have a choice' Damien thought to himself all alone in the cell.

Faithful to the pledge, Leon was back with a metal trey of the slop most prisoners were given to eat. Damien was only required to a take a step away from the glass so Leon could bring it in. Once he was done, Kennedy went back to the other side of the glass and out of the cell.

Damien gobbled down the food in a heartbeat. He spent most of his adolescence in juvenile housing, and had seen the inside of a jail for the last two years, so he knew how to stomach this horrible food like it was nothing. Watching Damien eat it, Leon could not help but wonder what happened to change him. In the stories he was much more violent and cynical; now he is still a little violent and dark, but the cynical nature had receded and he was much calmer now. Something had to have happened for him to change so much and so critically.

He thought back to what Damien said about the Umbrella team, White Umbrella. When his team found the Umbrella files on Damien, and reports from the Brimstone outbreak, the file was labeled as belonging to a faction called White Umbrella who did the research into him.

Could one of them have changed him, Leon thought, while still watching him eat.

"So who was it that captured you, Damien?" Leon asked, as Damien was finishing with his food, and bringing him back to the story. Snow looked at him, before sliding the trey close to the door so someone could get it later, and replies "Caleb Wilson, and this misfit collection of ragtag survivors he brought together over the course of the outbreak."

"Where were they taking you?"

"Back to their little camp, for some Q & A, and I was very surprised by what I saw; you would never have imagined so many survivors in one place."

**Brimstone Bayou**

**Survivor camp**

**1996**

Upon reaching the fringes of some populated area, Damien could hear something outside of the bag over his head. Several gasps were heard with the questioning of who he was. They forced Snow to walk for several minutes and it dragged on forever, before finally the bag was taken off his head.

A camp was built around the wreckage of a crashed air plane. The plane must have been for a small military unit, it was too small for a commercial air flyer. RV's were parked with rents and trailers around the structure with large square objects and crates everywhere with scattered various guns. The people inside must have been living here for days, now, and were making some attempt at surviving this nightmare.

Aiden was the one holding Damien's hands behind him like a restraint, with Logan and Wilson close to him. After taking the mask off, Wilson says "When we're inside, put him in the plane and return to your quarters." Damien heard one of them call him Caleb; he had black hair, short pointy hair brushed forward.

Logan was quiet as a mouse on the way, while giving Snow an angry glare as they came close to the camp. He could be heard asking Luke "What am I goanna tell Lori?" The man was meaning his wife in the camp, most likely, and was struggling with how to break the news about Ben. He was carrying Damien's crossbow in his hand while walking nervously.

Logan Peyton was a much older man than Damien; he had to be in his mid thirties at least. Ben could have been born when Logan was his age. He has light brown hair that was brushed back on the front of him, and thick stubbles around his mouth and jaw, and a pair of dark blue eyes. The man wore a tan brown long sleeves shirt and dark grey pants, as well as some deputy boots. It was hard, for Damien, not to notice his colt python in the leather holster, dangling on his right side close to the thigh.

"You'll have to think of something, Logan." Luke tells him.

Luke wore a grey t-shirt and green track pants, as well as a cap backwards on his head with the logo of Brimstone sheriff department. The Beretta in his hand was noticeable. It was taken off of Damien when he was captured. Aiden was hardly noticed at all, so Damien did not bother to look at him. He was more like a thug than any survivor. Damien hated them all and would have jumped at the chance to be rid of them like a blemish on the skin.

Caleb shuts down the chatter between the two friends. "Forget about that, Luke. Just make sure our guest here is securely locked up and make sure no one sneaks in to pay him a visit. I want to talk with him later, after I collect Ben's body." He said so harshly, pointing to Damien when he said guest, while toying the radio he took off Damien earlier.

Wilson was pressing the buttons, trying to get the device working. Whatever Alex did to it before, the thing was now hard to work with. Even Damien had trouble getting it to work before, so the operative had his work cut out for him.

Walking through the camp, after the gates to the fence for keeping the zombies out closed; he had quantities of eyes looking on him with various expressions. Lori, Logan's wife, was happy to see her husband, but upon seeing her son was not with them asks "Where's Ben?"

"Lori, Ben's not with us. He was killed during the run." Logan says to his wife with a heavy heart and sad expression.

Mrs. Peyton was crushed by the news. She almost broke down, until she sees Damien and realizes he was connected to her son's death, and then she called for his blood. "You killed my son!" She shouted at the passing prisoner, while her husband holds her back. Damien wasn't sure if Logan said he did, but now all the camp thought he did. "Burn in hell,"

"I'm pretty sure we're already there, Lady!" Damien responded to the woman's cry out. He never believed in heaven much, unless it was during a funeral, but hell was something harder for him to deny, especially now. This county turned into a den of monsters over night and they were standing in the middle of it, it must be hell. No other place in the world could be it.

"That's enough, kid. Keep your mouth shut or I'll make you!" the welsh swordsman said to Damien as he was led through camp. Peering over his shoulder to the soldier, Damien responds "Kiss my ass, army boy!"

Remaining sullen, Caleb forced Snow to look back, with a pull of the shoulder, and punches him across the face with a blank expression on him "Take it easy, country boy. I'll have no problem putting you down like I would any zombie!"

Damien was taken into the plane wreckage and thrown into a crudely made cell. Seething in anger, he cursed at everyone. Ben, for attacking him; Logan, for capturing him; Caleb, for bringing him here; Luke and Aiden, for helping them; and he hated himself the most, for letting himself getting caught. He hated failure, especially when it was his own, and to be caught by the rag tag bad of survivors who looked like they could not find their ass with both hands and a map was truly pathetic.

Caleb watched his captive move around in the cell, like a kid watching a lion in the cage, while placing the personal belongings he took off of him on a nearby table. Quickly he clears the plane of anyone inside, out of fear for trouble causers, and looks for some help.

"Simon, Tessa, come over here!" Wilson calls to some close by survivors for help.

Simon Crane was a young man in his late twenties with short brown hair and blue eyes. He wore a white t-shirt under a black denim jacket and black track jeans. The only weapon on him was a personal colt M1911A1 with an ornate grip.

Tessa Thorne was also young, though a woman, in her early twenties. She had long black hair and green eyes. The clothes she wears were a black leather jacket over her grey shirt and blue jeans. Her weapon was a folding pocket knife; she often called it a balisong, with a one-sided blade with a handle that looks like bones.

Simon and Tessa both walk over to Wilson. Tessa was just toying with her knife and Simon was playing cards with other survivors. One was a private investigator and the other was a professional thief, but both arrived in Brimstone days before the outbreak occurred.

Pointing out to where the prisoner was held, Caleb says "This is our latest guest. We found him on our way back from the bayou and now the Peyton's are out for blood."

"What do you need from us, Wilson? I was one hand away from conning Conner out of his pain medication." Simon said while leaning on the entrance. Tessa was taking a good look over to where Damien was.

Wilson sighs in irritation at Simon's banter. Caleb trusted Simon, more than the people here in the camp, and was accustomed with his nature and found him to be reliable. Still there were times he questioned his validity. "I need you two for guard duty; make sure no one kills him. I need to talk with him later!"

Simon was reluctant to do so, but agreed. Tessa was hardly paying any attention; she follows Caleb because she considered it as the option offering the quickest way out of the hell hole she found herself in.

"Alright," they both said to Caleb's request and he left quickly. He was still toying with the radio while leaving, and Damien wondered why he was in such haste to get it working.

Tessa was continuing to eye Snow in the cage. She heard the commotion moving through the camp when he was brought in, but was surprised it was just one person that caused it. Lori still wanted to kill him and instantly she could understand why Caleb wanted them guarding him.

Simon also took notice to him, knowing of how Lori wanted to kill him and was sure she was going to be the problem Caleb thought was coming, but suddenly a new one marched in yelling "Where is he; where's the son of a bitch that killed Ben!?"

* * *

**A/N Dedication: in loving memory of my Uncle Steve**


	8. Chapter 7: Recruitment

**Okay, if you watch the CW show Arrow, this is based off of episode 13 Betrayal. I've been itching to get to this part for weeks now and am both proud and excited to unveil it. Enjoy.**

* * *

**Chapter 7: Recruitment**

**Brimstone Bayou**

**Survivor Camp**

**1996**

In his life, Damien had seen his fair share of women angry by having a boyfriend die when they were not around and they always wanted revenge soon after, but the crazed before him woman took it to a whole new irate level while she barged in the plane in a huff before she was halted.

"Simon, Tessa, let me go!" the woman said. Damien watched them restrain her. It was all he could do from his cell as she pointlessly tried to free herself from the grip.

Ben's girlfriend, Damien thought to himself. Part of him may have felt sorry for Logan, on account of killing his son, but he felt none for this white-trash girl.

"Calm down, Maggie," Tessa still attempts to calm the furious hussy down.

Maggie was, like Ben, in her late teens with long blond, wearing regular teenager clothes. She had two silver M1911's on her, but when she aims for Damien, Simon took them from her before she could fire off a shot.

"You'll pay for Ben, I promise you that," Damien felt like he was alone under a spot light, with the whole world looking at him, with Maggie still threatening him. "He never did anything to deserve being killed by a low life like you!"

Michael rematerializes at the bars of the cell, while Simon and Tessa take Maggie away. She was still swearing vengeance as they took her away. Near the end of the rant, Damien sits down with his back pressing against the wall.

"Such a fun bunch," Damien joked in his new home. The padded cell of the asylum replaced with the cell of a prison. Michael looked over at his step-son's captors. Looking back he asks "You'd rather take your chances with the cannibals in the woods?"

Damien felt some comfort with the hallucination here. His father may be the monster he fears worse than the ones here, but he was the only familiar.

Simon and Tessa were finally able to get Maggie to leave and were left alone with their prisoner once more. Looking over, Simon says "Things ain't looking so good for you right now, friend." Then he sees Damien look back at him "You better hope Wilson bringing the corpse back calms things down. If not…well you're screwed."

"Really, how do you figure that, Cerberus?" Damien was not afraid of them, just like he was not afraid to show it, and continues to wait.

"Maybe I should start over. Hi, my name is Simon" then points to the woman and says "This is my associate Tessa. And you are?"

"My name's go screw yourself," Damien insulted him in response. Simon was almost smug to hear him say it.

Tessa however remained silent while keeping a watchful eye over him. She learned from her experience on the streets that the best way to get the mark is to study it. He was hard to read though. All the man did was waiting in cell waiting for the time to come when he could leave.

Noticing her gaze Damien says "Hey, Lady. If you've got something to say than say it, if not then quit staring. It's getting real creepy real fast."

Looking at him, Simon asked "Why'd you do it?"

"Do what?" Damien callously asked without the slightest clue to what the man was talking about. Then Simon clarified "Ben, why did you kill Ben?"

_Why did I_, Damien thought with a shrug of his shoulders. Drawing up a blank face he could only think to say was "I'm not a good person, Simon, never did a good thing in all my miserable life; just following the same routine."

"Truer words were never said, bastard." Michael says with a sadistic smirk.

Simon looked into Damien's cold eyes and expected to see the look of someone talking a big game but sees that he means every word of it.

Walking over to the table, where their prisoner's belongings were put, Simon looks through the items. The crossbow, bolts and knife he left alone but the lighter he pulled up and tries to light a cigarette with only to realize it does not work.

"What the hell," Simon say outraged by the useless item and asks "What's the point of carrying this?" Damien looked up at the hand holding the lighter after hearing him and responds "That's of sentimental value only, not for personal use."

Taking a look at the used item, Simon sees the initials: T.V. Its exterior looked old, like it had been around for decades, and it was imaginable that the interior was even older looking. He put it back down and asks "And how is it of sentimental value to you?"

"I took it off the first girl I banged when she fell asleep." Damien sarcastically lied to Simon. Again he convinced the man he was not lying to them. Tessa was less convinced but had nothing for her to call his bluff.

Simon had hoped to learn something from his stuff; if there was anything his year as a private investigator taught him it was how to learn about someone based on the items they keep. But the only thing that could count for personal was pictures of the man in the cell with four other men and then one of him with a blond headed woman; the last picture had an infant on it.

Simon grabs the pictures of the woman and child before walking back to the cell. "Who are these two?" Damien heard him ask after walking up to the cell.

Damien looked at the pictures of his girlfriend and daughter feeling guilt build up on the inside. Two people whose lives he has hurt. Sarah died because he got her pregnant and Jennifer was motherless because of it.

_Sarah, Jennifer_, Damien thought to himself while feeling the guilt build up, _I'm so sorry. _

"I'll ask you again. Who are these two and who are you and why do you have these pictures?" Simon repeated the question and again Damien gave a blank face in response before Simon relented, giving up on the interrogation.

"Not a big talker is he?" Tessa asked while still watching him fall asleep. Damien looks at her angrily for a second before saying "Jeez what gave you that idea raven head?"

Finally, Damien has his head lying down on the ground with his jacket for a pillow and closes his eyes for a quick nap. Michael sneers "Oh, it's so cute; the bastard's tired and wanting to take a little nap like a baby."

During the usual sessions of nightmares in his sleep, Damien's body felt like it was numb to the world and cold. The monster Sarah scream at him, calling Damien a monster and a failure as a man, and her eyes and mouth letting out the same glow, before once again vanishing into darkness as the nightmare comes to an end.

"Get up, kid." A voice said after a foot kick to the side woke him up.

Damien sees Caleb standing over him with a serious face and asks "Something I can help you with, Rambo?"

Caleb pulls him up and shoves the jacket in his arms. "Let's go," He said while leading Damien out of the cell. While putting his jacket back on, Damien asks another question "So where are you taking me, Ponce de Leon?"

After that comment, Caleb made Damien walk in front of him. Moving from one spot after another, with Simon and Tessa as extra security, he was eventually brought outside of the camp with only Wilson, Crane, Thorn and Peyton present.

"What is this, some hearing before my execution?" Damien asked mockingly of the survivors. Caleb nods his head no and replies "I know who you are, Damien Snow. Ada told me over the radio all I needed to know."

"Well bravo," Damien clapped his hands "You know my name. What does it have to do with what's happening now?"

Suddenly Logan has his python aimed close to Damien head and says "Hey, army boy, you mind telling George here cool it," with his thumb aimed at Logan. "Lenny doesn't feel like being shot today."

"Caleb wants me to spare you, or at least hold it off, says you'll be able to do some good and I don't buy it."

"You got some serious problems woody," Damien said knowing full well that this was still about Ben.

"You killed my son, so you'll have to forgive me if I'm not in the most trusting mood right now." Logan spoke back to him.

"I don't get what you're so pissed at me for. Ben attacked me, I had to defend myself, and he wouldn't listen to reason." Damien gives his defense. "I told him to stop or I'd kill him and he wouldn't so I stabbed him."

Yet the barrel still remained to his head and Damien was fairly pissed by this and says "That's it I've had enough. You know what Peyton, just shoot me. I didn't want to kill your son but you seem dead set on killing me so get it over with." Logan remained featureless with the weapon aimed. "I'm not goanna beg you for mercy, never bed for a thing a day in my life. You hear me? I'm not goanna beg you!"

Logan must have believed something in him because the revolver soon came back down from Damien's head. Panting, Damien turns around to face him to see the weapon being put back in its holster.

"Thank god," he mutters to himself with his heart still racing and the others smirking in amusement at the big bad prisoner was scared by one little gun. Caleb even said "How do you like that, the big bad prisoner is scared by one gun."

"Was scary from where I was standing." Damien talked back to the people holding him hostage.

Peyton himself was sniggering at the joke as the others laughed. Damien hated them all; he hated being surrounded by this posse. He still would make a run for it if he had the faintest chance of not being shot in the back.

"You mind cutting it with the jokes chuckles; it's been a long day and I'm not in the mood for jokes anymore." Damien cuts into the laughter. "Whatever it is you want just spill it, Wilson, or you and Sheriff here can take me back to my cell." He ordered them.

Caleb had head nodding in agreement. "Very well," he says before looking to his colleagues. "Logan, you, Simon and Tessa return to camp; I need to have a little chat with our guest."

Logan complied without question. Simon and Tessa were looking at each other uncertainly before giving Caleb a confused look as they left. There were definitely trust issues between all of them but none of them were willing to call Caleb on it.

Caleb walks towards Damien once the others were gone, trudging slowly like Jason Voorhees or Michael Myers.

"So, Mr. Snow, I believe it's time you were appraised." Caleb stated once he was close enough to where both could see the other's face in the night. Then a fist hits the weakened young man, sending the body in a back-spin, before Caleb's left arm holds a blade to Damien's throat while the other restrained his right arm.

"Twitch and I'll open your throat!" Wilson says like it was meant to be a whisper in the dark. "How many more with you,"

Damien found the question impossible to have an answer for. He was alone in this, other than Ada who he spoke to once and his hallucinations, as always.

His brother was the only one he planned on having with him, when they left this god forsaken patch of swamp, but now it was a bust until James could be found.

"What-Who," Damien stutters, not sure how to respond or what to say. "I don't-"He tried to explain but the cold kiss from the steel of the ninja agent sword was enough to cut him off more than any words could.

"After Ada spoke to you last, she tried contacting you again and White Umbrella answered; saying you agreed to working with them." Caleb clarified the reason for his threatening interrogation. It also explained why Wong would never respond, after he escaped, she thought he was one of them now.

Damien was never frightened easy, but the sword had him scared shitless and on the region of terrified. His hallucinations of Michael and Sarah stood watching in amusement before Sarah says "Your screwed, love."

"Now," Caleb sounded really intimidating. "You have to the count of ten, to tell me something believable, before I cut you open and pull out your voice box!"

"Wait, wait, wait; I just escaped from those bosoes after they did that. Besides, why would I want to work with employee psychos and monsters?" Damien says in his defense.

Caleb quickly releases his arm and blade grip and shoves him back. When Damien turns back to face him, the blade's point was close to his throat.

_Does he believe me_, Damien thought to himself, _or_ _is he going to puncture my Adam's apple and call it a day._

"What," Caleb utters at him, with his hand holding the sword tightly by the handle with one hand and ready to kill his prisoner at a moment's notice, while appearing to believe Damien's words.

Damien was quick to riposte, not taking any chances of getting himself killed. "Those people who had me captive. Two of their people are monsters. One is a bald man without a mouth carrying a tomahawk and the other is this scaly freak with a scarecrow's cap and coat."

"What's this about a psycho?"

At that point Damien knew he had his attention.

He then says "When I called you Wintergreen before, it was because they had this one guy by that name, he was dressed just like you only his uniform was black and he carried a sword like you do."

Hearing that, Caleb begins to stoically lower his weapon. Once it was Damien could, for the first time since the blade was originally pulled on him, breathe in fresh air and relief. He was safe, for now.

Looking at him, Damien still felt nervous around the soldier like he was Jack the Ripper.

Even while remain still like a gargoyle, Caleb was scary.

"So what happens now," Damien spoke up, breaking the silent staring contest between them. "Are you going to kill me or what?"

Caleb looks at Damien with a curious eye. He knew he was more than capable of defending himself, Damien could see it in his eyes. "First I train you to be something that won't get us killed. I could use some good men."

"And why would I want to help you; I don't even know you, plus you just had your sword up to my throat." Damien responds. "I still have problems of my own, like finding my brother,"

Damien was reluctant to accept that he was being offered help that easy; no one does anything unless it's in their own interest. He learned that lesson a long time ago the hard way and he was never going to make that mistake again.

"Fair enough, but do you really think you can find your way on your own? Besides, I can help you and I can offer you something even more." Caleb tempted him to listen to him with what he wanted and more.

"What's that," Damien asked before sarcastically saying "and if you even joke about it being friendship I'll punch you so hard you'll beg me to kick you."

Caleb looks at Damien for a second, humored by the joke, suppressing a smile before saying "I can help you and your brother escape from the county."

With that, Damien was awestruck.


	9. Chapter 8: Training

**Chapter 8: Training**

**Military Bunker**

**Damien Snow's Cell**

**1999**

"Wilson had a way out of Brimstone?" Leon asked, very confused."What could he do for you that couldn't be achieved on your own?"

"Because the only way out of that cesspool was by bridge," Damien retorts back while sitting down on his bed with his back against the wall. "And it was destroyed after the Wendigos overtook the small town."

"Why did you listen to him? You never trusted anyone new at that point in your life. Why start then?"

Making a tsk gesture of his head, Damien chuckles "I don't know what to tell you double oh seven, Wilson was a persuasive talker. He was a good guy-for a Welshman-and the closest thing to my first friend."

**Survivor camp**

**Brimstone Bayou**

**1996**

Damien agreed to Caleb's offer.

The morning that followed his recruitment, Damien was brought to the same spot where Caleb had held a blade to his throat during the night before; this time for training. They started with knives. Caleb hands him a tactical military knife. Damien felt like a thirteen year-old when holding it, like the weapon was his Uncle's old SOG knife. His hunting knife was not an option, Wilson thought it too clumsy for him to use in training.

"Dead," Caleb would raucously state every time he brought Damien down with a knife close to his throat. He would always grab his knife hand and then sending him spinning backwards while tripping him onto the ground, every single time. Damien tried a few of the Marine and Navy Seal moves his brothers taught him when they were on leave and none of them worked. After having enough, Caleb tried to find another way. "This is getting us no where!" he declared.

Pulling himself up, Damien sarcastically remarks "You think,"

After waiting a few minutes, Damien sees Caleb come back with four sticks that look like they were made of bamboo. "Here, Kid, catch." He said while tossing two of them over to Damien."

"What's this for?" The kid asked, not sure what good this would do him.

Caleb clarifies "Stick fighting, a military method for training reflexes and quickness. Since knife fighting was clearly a bust, and it's apparent you're only good against a zombie, I'm hoping I'll be able to training to use close combat in case we have to deal with the soldiers."

Hours put into that training. Damien did better with stick fighting than he did with knives, Caleb was still besting him, but he was improving. Simon and Tessa would often drop by to watch in, a few of the kids in the camp as well.

"How did you survive this place," Caleb mocked his trainee "I've met girls selling cookies with more fight in them than you."

"Fighting girl scouts now Caleb?" Damien responds, much to the soldier's ager. The comment earned one of Damien's hands a strike from Caleb's stick, like it was a twig used to hit a child for punishment. "What the hell," he cursed after dropping one of his sticks and hissing in pain.

"Listen kid, we don't have long for this. The enemy is going to find this place eventually. We have days; do you hear me; days to turn you into at least half a soldier." Wilson said. He was tough, like Damien's brothers after they went into the service, and Snow was accustom to it. "So start taking it seriously!" Caleb barked one last order.

Damien could see the validity to his point. Any day they could be attacked and any day he could be killed unless he's prepared for the inevitable fight. Then he makes one more attempt to beat him with just one stick, Damien is again beaten.

"What's the point of this!? These soldiers don't carry batons, they have guns! So what am I supposed to do when one of them shoves a gun in my face, threaten them with my stick?" Damien asked, frustrated by what little progress they have made, and holding his only fighting stick up.

This time, Caleb sees his point and pulls out one of the two M1911A1s he kept on his sides, holding it by the barrel, and says "Jam this in my face."

Damien looked with a confused face. "Do it!" Wilson ordered before Snow reluctantly aims the for his trainer's face.

As soon as the borrowed handgun was raised, Caleb grabs the weapon before his body spins back and uses his free hand to elbow Damien in the back before throwing the student over his shoulder and hard onto the ground.

When Damien looks back up he sees his temporary weapon aimed at him and Caleb was holding it once more.

"Do you want to live?" Damien heard him ask, while still dazed and trying to understand what just happened. "Do you what to live!?" Caleb barked at him again to get a response and finally he says "yes,"

"Then adapt. These guys will not hesitate to put you down; there is no giving up; no talking your way out. If you can't win a fight then what do you do?"

"I escaped, live to fight another day." Damien guessed his answer not sure if it was the right one.

"Then let me show you how." Caleb said while putting his handgun away and then Damien retrieves his lost fighting stick.

Again they go at each other. Damien put everything he had into the attacks while Wilson was barely breaking a sweat and then they reached a point where Damien was improving.

Finally they had to stop when the audience to the training began to grow.

_Did they not know_, Damien wondered to himself as the older survivors were still giving him death glares. He had assumed Caleb told them they would be out here training, but when Lori arrived and was still calling for his blood he had his answer.

"Why is he still alive, Wilson? You need to kill him, he's dangerous!" Lori was still acting like a mourning and irate bitch. Logan was trying to calm her but she would have none of it.

"Go back to the plane, kid." Caleb tells his trainee before going to sooth the savage beast that was making up the crowd.

Damien did as he was told and walks for the plane, moving through the alleys that he was brought through in the camp and disappeared from the sight of the lynch mob.

Caleb faced the mob with his usual stoic face, before being heard barking at them to cease. "That's enough," he hissed with harshness "I need him alive for the mission, if you don't like then leave the camp!"

Wilson was ice cold; the kind of objectified professionalism all soldiers have programmed into them with their gun and combat skills. He put the success of the mission above personal grudges. It was doubtful he'd kill any of the civilians in the camp, unless he had to.

Finally the mob fell silent and slowly vanished.

Coming back to the plane felt like a march into exile. Damien Snow didn't care what people thought of him, never did, but he always felt so alone like he never belonged anywhere. Sarah was the only one who ever made that feeling vanish, his light in the darkness, and now she was gone. He only had ghosts of the past for company.

"What do I care," Damien spits to the ground while perishing such thoughts. "I'll always be alone; might as well get used to it."

The plane was right where he left it earlier this morning; his crossbow and hunting knife too. Damien inspected his remaining bolts for any signs of ruin and then their propeller for the very same.

Simon was waiting on the other side of the plane, cleaning his handgun. Damien imagined he was here on Caleb's order; making sure no one in the camp does him in for Lori.

"That went well," Caleb sarcastically entered into his plane. Damien snaps back at him with more sarcasm "Really?"

"Lori's starting a storm, Caleb. If we don't deal with it we'll have a riot on our hands." Simon was blunt, not even trying to sugar code it.

"I know, I know." Caleb responded despondently. He was calm now, but before the stoic persona had burst apart in anger with the insubordinate survivors.

Damien himself was more confused as to why Caleb troubled himself over the one hussy. He was obviously the de facto leader in this band of merry men; so why sweat her? "So just deal with her." He finally blurted his suggestion out. "It's not like she's calling the shots around here."

"It's not that simple," Simon tried to explain.

"What so complicated about it; just throw her out of the camp and she'll be Wendigo chow."

"Because the camp's defenses rely on all of us cooperating and if we start throwing them to the wolves they'll withhold supplies and ammunition for themselves; before long everyone takes sides and killing each other over it."

Damien could see the point then. "What we need is to show people here that you can be trusted." Simon said. He gave a considerable thought before saying it, but you could tell he meant it by the serious look in his eyes.

Damien gave only derision to the idea. "I doubt your "friends" are going to give me a second chance based on your word alone." Then he jokes "Besides it's not like you can send me on some epic mission, or something."

"Maybe we can," Caleb said before reaching to grab his solid bi-colored mask and grey swords "I have to go check out a lead Ada mentioned."

"What does that have to do with my public camp image?" Damien asked before Caleb gives him a quick look and saying while pointing in a direction "Logan's going on another run with some of the others, go with them; it'll be a good start."

"So I'm supposed to work with the guy who aimed a gun at my head two times yesterday? I think I'd rather take my chances with the lynch mob." Damien protests. He then received another serious look from Caleb before grabbing his crossbow and saying "I'm going."

Once Damien was clear from their view Simon speaks up while Caleb checks his weapons. "Hard to believe he's the one your boss sent you to get." He said with Caleb staring at him from the corner of his eye. "Where are you going to tell him about the people who captured him?"

Caleb fashions the swords on his back in an x. "Soon," he finally answered. "Once we don't have to worry about Lori and the others, I'll tell him; until then keep a lid on it."

"What about Logan; he could still be a risk to Snow's life."

"I'll deal with it; you and Tessa just stay in camp until I return. Keep things calm till then."

Meanwhile Damien was making his way to the site where Caleb was pointing to earlier. He wasn't even sure why he was doing this; they would kill him the first chance they got and he knew it, he just wasn't sure what to do about it.

Caleb eventually caught up with him; still carrying the mask in his hand. "I didn't know it Halloween." Damien joked when he saw the mask. "I would have gotten my Frankenstein mask."

"Wiseass," Caleb retorted. "This is my operational equivalent to a balaclava; wear this to keep my identity a secret while on missions."

"Oh; I thought you MI6 boys loved to dress in suits and play Bond."

"You think I'm a what?" Caleb asked sounding confused.

"I know a British accent when I hear one; if you're not MI6, then what; SAS?"

"Neither," Caleb answered. "And to clarify I'm Welsh, not British, and I'm an American like you. I work for a group called the H.C.F."

Damien didn't find it hard to recognize the title; he remembered Emil had the same logo on him when he was sprung from the asylum; another one at the front desk had the one on him too. _What were they called again? _Damien thought to himself and says "The Hive/Host Capture Force."

"Good; so you know who we are." Caleb was relieved. "That'll save me some time with the superfluous introductions."

"Where are you going now?" Damien asked out of his own curiosity. Caleb responded "I have to talk with Logan for a second and I thought you should know what you're getting yourself into. This isn't a run."

Damien was shaken, not shocked, but shaken to hear it. It's not like him and Caleb have known each other for a very long time, he just hoped it was simple as it was made out to be earlier. "What is it?"

"Early this morning I sent Luke on a run with a few others, they never came back. Logan's going to check it out with a few volunteers. What you're going with them because I need to know if it was just zombie attacks or something else."

"Why should I do that?" Damien asked and Caleb responds "It'll keep Lori from killing you."

Inserting himself among the seven other volunteers, Damien feels like an outsider to them as he felt hundreds of gazes on his back.

"What is he doing here?" Logan angrily asked. He could be heard by everyone; Damien was just the only one responding to them.

"He's going with you to find Luke." Caleb told him, preparing to fit on his mask, but Logan interrupts him. "I don't want him here; he's a risk for brewing fights."

"It's not your call anymore; you're wife caused this problem, now he needs to earn some good faith or be shanked later."

Caleb sustained his angry talk with Logan until finally the guy relented and the only thing Damien didn't hear was Caleb's threat. "If he doesn't come back I'll know it was you; and trust me it won't end well for you."

For a second, while waiting to leave this oppressive pit, Damien could have sworn he saw the silhouette of a scarecrow standing in the woods outside of camp. He thought it the Creeper sent by the soldiers to bring him back and kill the others. He could've spoken out and alerted them of the creature but then Logan speaks up himself "Move out; we're leaving."

"When Damien looks back the figure in the forest was gone; vanished into the wilderness.

The last Damien saw of Caleb was him walking in another direction from theirs and finally putting the mask on.

As Damien walks away with the group, he remained unaware as the Creeper looks on with his razor sharp teeth in a wicked smile. It turned its attention to the throwing knives and throwing stars made from the flesh and bone from previous victims and then returning its gaze to Damien with another evil smile and follows behind them.


	10. Chapter 9: Bodies in the Church

**Chapter 9: Bodies in the Church**

**Brimstone Bayou**

**Somewhere in the Wilderness**

**1999**

After parting ways with Caleb, Damien followed behind Logan's group with the crossbow mounted on his back. He was nervous about being out here with them; there wasn't a thing he knew about them and any one of them could still want him dead, especially Logan.

This bastard may have committed his fair share of horrid deeds in the past, but he had no intention of this being his penitence and spending his final moments playing ignorant bliss to an upcoming demise.

Damien Snow was never one to go down without a fight, and he wasn't going to start now.

He kept a close watch on the others; specifically Logan Peyton. His python could do some damage with even one direct hit. One other member of the seven volunteer militiamen had as much of Damien's attention as Logan, his name was Mark; he carried a bolt-action rifle on his back.

It could prove troublesome if Damien ever had to make a run for it.

The rest carried pistols and shotguns; Damien could handle them no problem; but only if Logan or one of them tries to whack him. A part of him was hopeful things would go Caleb's way and without a hitch but that seemed less likely every second out here.

While trekking through the woods, he took a few looks back; still unsure if the Creeper was stalking them are not.

Along the way a few of the survivors gossiped about what transpired during Luke's run. The best Damien could make out was that their guy stopped here on his way to a graveyard of cars when he suddenly was cut off; afterwards all Caleb and Logan heard was static.

Logan led them for about an hour until they finally reached their destination. Damien wasn't impressed; Brimstone wasn't big; if you knew your way around, then walking from place to place could take someone half a day or a few hours and still have plenty of time to get back home before dark.

Damien noticed, as he looked around, they were close to a road leading to the asylum he escaped from a day and a half ago.

Everyone looked on the macabre sight of a tattered, and recently abandoned, collection of swamp shacks and the bodies of its former tenants could be found with bullet holes in the heads or bite marks from where other zombies made a meal out of them before they too were abandoned.

"We're here," Logan announced seriously.

Zombies close to the shacks were still feasting on corpses. One nearby notices them; it was a woman in ripped clothes and blood. Damien raises his crossbow in an instant to fire. "You ugly skank," He insulted the monster before firing a bolt through its eye.

Walking to grab the bolt, Damien put the tip to his shoe on the head; holding it down he pulled the arrow out as quickly as he put it in. Logan and Mark both look at him with cautious gaze and disturbed expression; they had killed zombies before, but Damien had no more compulsion with killing them than he would with eating his own breakfast.

The young man refused to heed their distrusting looks; Damien wasn't there to make any friends, he was there to do a job then go home, or in this scenario the camp.

"Not too shabby," Casey complimented him. He had to be the only one not giving Damien a death stare.

Casey Blake was younger than the other volunteers. He had to be Damien's age; nineteen at best. Blake was dressed in a short-sleeved shirt and blue jeans, with a hockey mask over his hair with a skull painted on; and carrying a pair of pistol on him. He was genial with Damien, something the others lacked.

"I love to be proficient," Damien responded with his normal tone substituted to be friendlier.

Silas Grayson, another volunteer, rolls his eyes; he was dressed like Luke, only with colors, and carrying a Glock 17. "If you two are done patting each other on the back, we have work to do." He said raucously while looking with the others at the shacks.

Damien joined them with Casey and raises his crossbow, looking though the scope, and zoom his focus on the area of the shacks to spot a small pack of zombies. "What do you see?" Logan asked.

Mark prepares to do the same with his rifle.

"Wendigos, a lot of them; most of them are outside chewing down on some doe but a few of them are on the inside."

"That should make things easy," Silas said before Logan completed it "All we have to do is kill the ones on the inside without making any noise."

Mark looks through the small village and spots an interest. "I think I've found where Luke might have been held up." Damien joined him in looking at the spot, an old house. It looked like a mansion compared to its neighbors. "Yeah; that would do it." He said in agreement.

"Alright then; how do we get in without attracting the attention of the zombies?" Logan asked his men with little suggestions.

Damien thought about it himself. He could make short work of any zombie on the inside; hell, it would have been a walk in the park. His only problem was inserting himself into the village without a zombie seeing or hearing him.

He did not fancy himself Odysseus, with the cunning to beat Cyclopes or cannibal giants but Damien just knew he could find a way.

A piece of earth soon catches his attention; where this one small creek ran by, it was big enough for him to fit in, and the only question was it deep enough? The gambit was long shot but he would need to risk it; he was looking to earn some good faith and this was good a start as any.

"Where are you going, Snow?" Logan asked, noticing he was moving before anyone else.

Damien points to the cramped piece of water. "See that creek there," he asks. "If I can fit in there then I'll be able to sneak up on those things before they know what hit them."

Logan made a face showing that he agreed while the others admitted it was a good idea. Before leaving they hand him a small radio to call them with once he was done. Luckily one part of the creek was close by so it was easy to get in unnoticed.

Dragging himself through the creek was an aquatic crucible for Damien; he took in one breath of fresh air before diving down and needed to make the air last. He felt like a Navy sailor going through hell week only with a more claustrophobic sense. It took him thirty minutes but eventually pulled himself from the creek and inhaled a breath of air.

Emerging from the water Damien grabs a zombie and drags it into the water, stabbing its skull, and left it floating there after winning the struggle. "This time stay dead." He instructed his defeated foe and prepared his crossbow.

Thinking of what he did, so critically, Damien wondered what if Jon and Oliver had been here with him and if they would have been impressed. Would they be astonished and amazed by their little baby brother's growth and how far he's come.

Your half brother, a voice of no origin reminded him. You're not a Vincent; not a soldiers like they are.

For Damien, it was his step-father's influence still haunting him like the ghosts he carries with him through this ever-growing nightmare he find himself in.

Casey was looking on, with Logan and Silas, and silently cheered Damien on with amusement and excitement. "Well, I'll be a monkey's uncle; it worked." Logan openly admitted to his own doubt of Snow's ability.

One zombie feasting corpse was in sight. The cretin was farthest from its brewed and ripe for the shooting.

"Hey, dead-head," he said like it was meant to be a low whistle as his crossbow rises. When the zombie looked in his direction it took a bolt between the eyes; afterwards Damien grinned. "Bull's-eye,"

In haste, he grabs the bolt from the skull and reloads as another zombie catches on to its fellow's demise. Damien took it down as quickly as the first, but it was too late, the other zombies came at him soon after.

After getting one more bolt out, Damien goes for his knife; one and two go down quickly with a stab to the head. When the remainder fell to his hunting knife, he looked around to see one left as he was retrieving his bolts.

Damien tilted his head with an irritated look before grabbing the blade of his knife and throws the weapon; landing it inside the head and killing the last zombie.

Without missing a beat, Logan and the others quickly join up with Damien and get inside the medium sized house. Casey helps him shut the door closed once their all inside.

The house was a disappointment for Damien; he was hoping for an ordinary home with objects to barricade door, but instead it was a church; old and abandoned like most of the dead county. No zombie could be found inside, only more dead bodies. All of them were killed by a tomahawk and a blade tearing through their bodies to where they died of blood loss.

Damien recognized the wounds; they were like the deputies in the asylum only it looked like the Mute was aided by someone with a sword.

A crucifix stood up in the front. Looking up, he sees the figure of the messiah Jesus Christ. "Hey J.C; how's the folks doing,"

"Uh," a faint pained moan echoes out, like the whale of a ghost. Damien looked to his-temporary-leader; he readies his crossbow and Logan prepares his revolver.

Luke was found to be the source; the very same Luke who helped Caleb and Logan capture him yesterday. He had a wound still bleed fresh blood, like the stream Damien just came out of, from a wound between his chest and stomach.

"Jesus; Luke, what happened to you," Logan asked his friend; helping to apply pressure to the wound. He, Mark and Casey were appalled by what happened to their friend.

"These freaks got to us," Luke muttered in Logan's arms. Whatever hit the dying man, it was clear to Damien the fear of it was still on him. "They came out of nowhere; one with a sword, one with a throwing axe and the one with this trench coat on."

"Trench coat," Damien repeated. "Did it look like a scarecrow?"

Luke was surprised to see Damien still alive, laughing even. "The smart-ass, still kicking I see; thought Caleb gutted you like a trout."

"Is that what did this?"

"Yeah; scarecrow about sums up what this thing looked like. It had throwing knives and stars; came at us like a ninja before dragging Aidan away." Luke responded. "You know him?"

Damien was unwilling to say anything more; he shut with a sullen expression. "No, no, no; this is not happening," he mutters to himself after backing away. Finally he announces and tries to conceal his fear "It's the creeper!"

"So you do know him?" Casey asked.

Damien made a look of admission before noticing this trail of blood that went further down the hall and made a left turn. "Uh, Luke, when the creeper took Aiden where did it go?"

Luke aimed down the hall where blood trail ends. "If you could have heard the screams coming out of there, your skin would crawl."

Readying his flashlight and crossbow, Damien finds a door at the end of Aiden's blood trail, or he assumed it was Aiden's. Part of him was hoping it wasn't.

The door, when opened, revealed only a void to endless darkness. A chill ran up Damien's spine, as he imagined the creeper's ugly face inside of the dark ready to pounce at a moment's notice. While looking into the darkness a shot rang out and he looked to where the others were attending to Luke.

"What happened with Luke?" Damien asked once he saw Logan walk up with blood spatter on his body and Casey following behind. It didn't take a rocket scientist guess what happened. By all odds he's probably dead, like Aiden, but it didn't hurt to ask.

"He…he was too busted up to help," Logan tried to explain while Casey fought back his own tears. It wasn't long until Damien stopped him with a hand raised. "You didn't want your friend to suffer any more so you put him out of his misery; I get it."

His reassurance did little to calm Logan's unhinged nerves, but Casey found some solace in that fact.

Logan swung to face the darkness in the door, that likely lead to a basement. "What'd you think is down there?" he asked with a hand on his holstered revolver, imagining what awful creature could be lurking down there in its bowls.

"The Creeper's lair maybe," Damien shrugged his shoulders, speechless to a genuine answer for the leader's question. Logan hands his the python revolver over and says "Take this and investigate; we'll deal with the zombies outside then bury our friends when we're done."

Without hesitation, Damien took the 44. Revolver and mounts the crossbow on his back. "I'll be back." He told them with a hesitant grin before walking down the steps with his new weapon and flashlight crossed together.

* * *

**A/N: To my readers if your wondering why I'm side tracking with this addition to the story, I would just like to say that I'm waiting to hear back from another author and wanted to have another encounter between the Creeper and Deadpool.**


	11. Chapter 10: Fyers

**Chapter 10: Fyers**

**Brimstone Bayou**

**Beneath a church**

**1996**

Damien creeps in the darkness at the bottom of the stairs, finding it to be the darkest basement in the history of basements. If there was one of many things Damien Snow knew it was basements; his step-father used to lock him in them every night until he was old enough to pick the locks.

The revolver and flashlight aimed in front of him, Damien searched every milk and cranny of this depressing crap hole while listening to the sound of gun fire upstairs; more than likely Logan and the rest killing the zombies to great effect.

Whatever the Creeper was doing down here, it was clear to Damien as day that things did not end well for its victims. Grotesque works of art made of human body parts were plastered on the walls in this lair with a record player found on a table where it more than likely did most of the work in this disturbing hobby.

Damien put his revolver down and saw the record labeled Jeepers Creepers, a 1938 song for jazz tune; the kind Snow pictured his grandfather or great-grandfather listened to.

"That's an old record," Sarah's ghost guesses. "Wonder why it likes this one song,"

"It's not that old," Damien replies, though he wondered the appeal himself before playing it in the dark.

Jeepers, creepers, where'd you get those peepers; the song played over in the lyrics. Instantly they struck a chord with Damien; as it reminded him of his grandfather, Sean, who occasionally played the song in his study.

The ghost of Michael stood next to the record player and looking over at his step-son with an angry glare. "This is a new bastard level, even for you, boy."

"You know me dad; I do love to disappoint you."

Readying the revolver to move for another search, Damien hears a faint snarl. When he turns to face it, the Creeper's razor sharp teeth forming a wicked smile was the first thing to be seen before a fist punches him into a wall and he passes out cold.

**Military Bunker**

**Damien Snow's Cell**

**1999**

"You were captured by Umbrella a second time," Leon stated his best guess.

Damien stairs at his lighter with a gritting smug expression, agreeing with his sentiment, "The Creeper caught me this time, not Umbrella, but yes I was,"

"While Logan was outside dealing with the Wendigo horde, the Creeper took me out through another basement door to meet up with some friends. It took me a while to come to."

Hearing Snow say that word over and over again in the story, Wendigo, Leon grows more curious to what its mean is. "Why do you keep referring to the zombies that way; why do you call them Wendigos?"

After the question is asked, Damien opens the lighter and closes it one more time before he faces Kennedy and asks a question of his own. "Do you know anything about Native American folklore?"

Leon never responds, only giving a clueless expression.

"I suppose not; you look more like the kind of guy who wasted his time giving geeks wedgies and scoring touchdowns on and off the field."

Damien then shows Leon a look, notifying him he was kidding, before clarifying. "The northern tribes tell this story about an evil spirit called the Wendigo; it preys on people in a Donner party scenario and tempts them to cannibalism; once you give in, you'll always be hungry with an endless craving for human flesh and it never ends."

"That's what you thought the zombies were: an evil cannibal spirit?" Leon asked with a laugh.

"No, I just called one of them that and the name kind of stuck."

Silence one again hung between the agent and prisoner. Leon looked into his eyes as Damien stared at the lighter before asking "How did you escape from Umbrella that time?"

"That's a bit ahead of a few important details." Damien responds and stands of from his bed to lean against the wall. "The answer to it goes to my friend Caleb."

"Where was he?" Leon asked.

"Tearing through what was left of the soldier's guard the White Umbrella outpost." Damien spoke back, "That's where it starts now."

**White Umbrella** **research outpost**

**Somewhere in the Brimstone Bayou**

**1996**

Caleb Wilson found his way to the Umbrella outpost, based on what Ada told him over the radio, no problem and quickly took shelter with the shadows of the Cave's darkness. He waited some time before making his move.

Guerilla style warfare became his choice of going at them. He waits for the opportunity to arise, while studying their activities, and then pounces on them like a panther on its prey.

Drawing his swords Caleb tears through the Umbrella forces with his two blades; not leaving one thing still standing in his path. Every soldier was cut down within seconds of their fellows. If guns were used, Caleb would just use the environment or one of them for cover.

"This is CLEAN UP to W.U. we're under attack. We need reinforcements A.S.A-AW" The soldier talking into the radio never got to finish his statement as a razor sharp blade tore into his back and came out of his chest.

He was skewered.

The swords cut through their numbers in seconds, decimating them. Limbs were cut, heads were decapitated and spirits were crushed.

When Caleb was finished cleaning house only a bloody mess remained of the soldiers with corpses lined on the ground in packs to make a small army.

He made on swing of his swords, to throw some of the blood off, and sheaths his weapons to look around. Looking at the passing bodies of his victims, Wilson feels no guilt over what he has done and no joy in killing the soldiers, they are enemy combatants and he is their enemy, it is nothing personal only fair game in war and his mission is survival.

Whatever he interrupted, Caleb was glad he did. Fires were being facilitated to burn papers and files that were of some vague importance. He quickly checks the one file that caught his attention. As he reads it, Caleb's eyes widen in shock as he says "Christ,"

Suddenly he hears a voice come from his radio. "Caleb, it's Peyton, we lost Snow,"

"What do you mean lost?" Caleb asks raucously while still reading the file.

"We found Luke, but then zombies started piling up outside and we needed someone to check the basement, but when he didn't come back we discovered someone took him out a second entrance to the basement." Logan tries his best to explain. But the details in the story didn't matter; Caleb was already packing the file in a pouch on his uniform and heading out.

"Return to camp, Peyton, I'll get Damien back."

"We're leaving now," Logan responds before hanging up.

Caleb walks back across the bodies to leave when he notices one soldier still alive and trying to pull up his rifle and kills him with his pistol, instead of using a sword, and continues his departure to find where Damien has gone off to.

**Meanwhile  
"Damien Snow"**

Damien finds himself in an armed escort of commandos wearing blue cameo with black balaclava, vests, boots, and fingerless gloves; and all of them carried M4A1s with ACOG scopes. The Creeper handed him over after kidnapping him from the church, and then it went off somewhere else.

This group was different from the soldiers who captured him the first time; they were more organized elites, but they certainly two of the same people. Both had the logo of the Umbrella on them somewhere and both work with the Mutes, Deadpool and Wintergreen.

When he tries to halt to catch a breath, one of the commandos pushes him. "Move," he ordered him with a cantankerous attitude.

"Come on, man, just give me a break. I've been walking for hours." Damien pleads with the soldiers for a moment of relaxation to no avail.

"I said move," He ordered more harshly this time and Damien relents.

Spotting his crossbow, Damien sees Wintergreen carrying it in a free hand and a sword, like Caleb's, sheathed on his back. All four bolts were still inside the built-in quiver and the fifth one still on the bow-string to be fired.

Wintergreen was the only one with the escort. Deadpool went up ahead of them to clear the way of any zombies or Cerberus'. They passed most of his handy work on the way. While walking Damien never once heard the boulder of a man utter a single sound.

Finally the soldier pushing Snow to move more and more crossed the point of no return with his patience. Without thinking things through, Damien impulsively looks back to headbutt him in retaliation and smiles once he does. All it accomplished was pissing the man off and getting himself his with the stock of his rifle.

"Remind me again why we need this asshole alive," the one Damien head-butted angrily replies to the assault by aiming his rifle for Snow's head.

Damien looks up, seeing the side, as the weapon is aimed at him. The feeling of the moment sends a chill shooting up and down his spine. Jon, Oliver, and James often told about how it feels to stare down a gun. It is just as they described, aside from the part where his life flashes before his eyes.

Another one of the commandos aims his own M4A1 at the same one who has his weapon trained on Damien."Put the gun down, Jack," he orders his comrade. "Fyers said to bring in Snow alive, not like the title to some New Jersey band's song."

Damien picks up on the joke right away. The few soldiers who get it make sniggers among themselves. Wintergreen, as always, remained stone cold silent. It made Damien think he had his tongue cut out or lost his voice. Obviously a cat didn't have his tongue. He didn't see one pinching down on it with sharp claws.

"Really, Cloud," the soldier called Jack asks in disbelief while still aimed at Damien. "You're going to stick up for this piece of white trash?"

The one called Cloud remains convicted in preventing Snow's demise. His weapon aimed for Jack's head. Jack meanwhile looks down at his possible victim and then Damien says "Screw you, Jackie." That was the last straw for the commando. He instantly prepares to kill his hostage but Cloud shoots him before he has the chance.

Damien is not sure if he is appalled or grateful by what has just happened, but he had little time to react as Wintergreen gestures them to move on. The other commandos did not even respond to their comrade's death.

Where he came from if a soldier dies the men he serves with at the very least give him a burial—but not for Jack—he is left to rot where zombies will be lured away from the walking path.

As the escort leads Damien even further they pass more re-dead zombies. These were different from the corpses the other mute littered around, they were killed by a blade in the head, and these were picked off by a rifle. This was not done by a hunting rifle either, some of the heads were blown off, and only a military grade rifle could do such damage at a certain range.

"I see Lawton's been busy," Cloud says to one of his coworkers. That one responds back "You know how Deadshot loves his target practice, Sergeant."

This Lawton is certainly infamous, Damien thought.

Finally this trail of no tears but blood, a beating, and corpses came to an end as Damien sees their base-camp up ahead. They have one large fortified gate too keep some of the scarce zombies out, like Caleb's camp. What separates them is that this one has soldiers and Commandos running around—not a bunch of yahoos running around playing survivors and zombies.

After the gate opens and closes Wintergreen hands over the crossbow to one of his men as they enter a tent with Cloud pushing Damien to follow behind the scary looking man. Wintergreen comes back out and takes custody of Snow from him and forces him inside.

Once he was in, Damien finds a man sitting at a desk with an exposed pistol in plain view. Whoever he is staring at now, this man was the obvious sheriff in town.

**Military Bunker**

**Damien Snow's Cell**

**1999**

Damien felt like he wanted to throw up after his story reached Fyers. Leon could tell by the expression on his face the encounter was not pleasant.

"I swear Kennedy, these guys the Creeper handed me off to they were different then the U.S.S. guys who had me two days before. They were more militarized. But Wintergreen was in charge of them, him and the Deadpool."

"Was Alex with them?" Leon asks, feeling like he needs some popcorn and a soft drink.

Damien nods his head. "No, he left by then. White Umbrella was there to do a real quick test on me and their B.O.W's. Then when they realized Wilson was still alive, Alex left his forces behind to deal with him and the other survivors…the one in charge now was this guy called Fyers, him and a scientist named Baltar."

"What did he want with you?"

Damien then says "A little chat about two of the fugitives they were after."

"Ada?" Leon guessed. He guessed correctly by the painful glare in Snow's eye.

"They brought me into this tent in the camp and that's where the painful part started."

**White Umbrella Camp**

**Brimstone Bayou**

**1996**

Edward Fyers was at the desk of his tent when Wintergreen walks in. He had been reading up on some of the individuals in the area; particularly Damien Snow and Caleb Wilson. Now low and behold his star mercenary with one of those very individuals he was interested in.

He maintained a sullen composure while putting the file away and Wintergreen leaves the two alone at the nod of a head.

Damien was cautious to the older man. He was certainly not what was expected to be running things here. Snow had thought it would have been someone bigger, meaner and more intimidating then even Wintergreen was.

"Please sit," Fyers gestures his hand at the desk across his table. "You're making me feel inhospitable."

There was no choice but to listen. What was his other option besides try to run and get shot in the back less than a few feet from the tent? So he pulls back on the chair and sits, strait up in a focused position, and Fyers pours himself a drink in the a glass cup.

His body felt worn out from the long walk here, it was nice to finally rest his legs.

Looking over as the drink drops into the glass, Damien gets a good look at his captor. Fyers was old as Caleb, possibly older, with light blond hair and eyes with a blue-greenish coloration and dark inner irises. He also wore a black operational uniform.

"I must apologize for my men's mistreatment of you, they've developed certain ruthlessness qualities these past few days and now their acting like its Vietnam." Fyers says to his "guest" before taking a long sip. It must have been hours since his last drink, because he gulped it down to nothing.

"Oh that's okay; I loved the trail of tears death march." Damien sarcastically mocked before asking "Is there a reason I'm sitting here, other than watching you gargle down a beverage?"

Fyers pretended to be amused by the tone of Damien's demeanor, or was censer, as he makes a suppressed smirk. "Yes, the glib of "the you could give a crap right now" persona. Such a hollow void, you are. No ambition, no lust for beautiful women, no care for self-preservation, not even gluttony; just a hollow smart-ass shell; must be a byproduct of your abandonment issues along with the other one and the guilt over your girlfriend dying."

He had the jist of things. Damien had to guess it was from the files he saw him reading through.

"But that's not important right now," Fyers cut away from emasculating him. He then picks up two pictures off a crate. "I'm looking for some people, Mr. Snow. Do you know where I might find these two?"

The One photo was a slap to Damien's face: it was of Caleb in a United States military uniform a few years ago. It was confirmation that he was an American after-all.

The second photo shows a woman of Chinese heritage and a few years Damien's senior with short black hair and brown eyes wearing a one-piece dress with black tights and a belt, black fingerless gloves, red heels, along with loafers and a watch.

The first one was older, from about five or six years ago, while the second one looked fresh, as if it was taken a couple days ago; most likely taken around the time before all this madness began plaguing Brimstone.

Looking back up, Damien asks "Should these two mean something to me?"

Resigning to go along with the perceived game of ignorance, Fyers says "These two are Caleb Wilson and Ada Wong. One is a former colleague of mine and the other works for a rival party that I wish to learn on and both have decided to play freedom fighter."

Hearing Ada's name was a surprise. He knew the woman on the radio was named Ada, but never knew what she looked like. Now he did. He wanted to hide his glad expression but now it was impossible, and Fyers saw it in a second.

She's hot, Damien thought to himself while examining the woman's face.

This was his ally and if these people were looking for her he knew that cooperation was not an option. "I don't know them." He lied.

"I was so hoping you wouldn't say that," Fyers said before getting up and walking to the tent exit. "He's all yours!" the yells caused Wintergreen to walk in and Damien just knew things were not going to get easier from here.


	12. Chapter 11: Reunion

**Chapter 11: Reunion**

**Brimstone Bayou**

**1996**

"**Caleb Wilson"**

Caleb hunted down Snow's trail after learning he disappeared. When that that turned up nothing useful he turned his frustration on the nearest biker club or psycho groups in the area. After wasting a whole good hour he had one still intact. He fastened restraints on the man and began to interrogate him.

"Where is he," Wilson asks as he beat the biker for information. "Where did they take Snow?"

Occasionally the biker gangs and criminals who survived the zombie outbreak would trade with White Umbrella for ammunition and supplies so Caleb was hoping they had heard something during the last trade.

"Go screw yourself, Brit," the biker spits blood on the ground and instantly took another blow from Caleb. Blood continues drip from his mouth. "I ain't telling you shit."

Beating the man was not something Caleb enjoyed. He had been the victim of many beating, in his various H.C.F. missions for Wesker, and started to consider himself worse than the ones who did it to him the last time. It was not like he could run from it though. The day he accepted Wesker's offer he made a deal with the devil and there was no going back.

He did find some vindication for beating him in the fact that—like Damien—the biker thought he was British and he hated being called that. Next to the few horrible things Wesker makes him do, Caleb hated being assumed to be an Englishmen.

The biker was tough; Caleb had to give him that. He took every blow like a contender. Not yielding not matter how tough the punch. Then when it came time for pulling out one of his swords, the biker was singing a different tune. "Alright, alright…shit, no need to be such a hard-ass."

Caleb smiles at his success with the blade close to the man's neck. "Start talking or I slice your throat open."

"Philip mentioned seeing a few of the soldiers, being led by Wintergreen, taking this one captive back to their camp." The biker sings like a canary. Caleb was angered to hear Wintergreen was there now. He would have been happy with storming the base-camp, but Billy Wintergreen being there complicated things.

Once the biker was finished, Caleb sighs. "Was really hoping I could avoid him," Then he runs the sword through the biker's chest and killing him in a matter f seconds. With that, the only chance of him being compromised again dies with the biker.

**Meanwhile**

"**Damien Snow"**

When Fyers called in Wintergreen, Damien knew things were going to get rough but not like this. Every time he was asked where to find Caleb and Ada, Snow refused to answer so his penitence was having the intimidating soldier cut into his flesh with the edge of his blade.

Damien would never relent. No matter how much pain he endured they would never get an answer out of him.

"Why do you protect them, you hardly know them." Fyers points out, but Damien would not hear it. "I may not know them that well, but anyone who uses tactics like this is enemies of mine and I'd rather die than I help you."

Over and over he was cut in the same spots. Whenever they finished a cut, over one of his old scars, the wound was instantly healed up. Damien was horrified to see it happen, but to his torturers it was a source of how to truly torment the young stubborn man. Cut, after cut, after cut hit Snow to no new result.

Wintergreen looks at Damien with his sadistic gaze continuing to linger on as he cut the blade across the body. He never blinked once.

This one time it stopped, Damien laughed at the sword. He felt in pain and yet he was not scared to die. How could he, he had nothing to lose. "You think I'm scared of a little blade…don't make me laugh, Frankenstein…my dad had a hunting knife more intimidating than that."

"I must commend you, Mr. Snow, you have resolve I never thought you capable of possessing." Fyers compliments. Like it would have made a difference what he said, Damien hated him all the same. "Or you truly know nothing…take him to the cage!"

The guards did not take long to arrive; taking him from the tent in binds as quickly as they arrived. They strut around like roosters while parading him through camp. Then they reach a spot where a pit in the ground was kept with only a bar door for an entrance and exit. After that the two throw him in and close the door.

Gravity brought Damien hard and fast to the hard dirt interior with dust puffing up around him. Between that and his coughing it was impossible to see what was going on around him while this figure in the shadows watches him struggle to his feet. It remained silent like Wintergreen for sometime as it studied him, judging its guest in this hell hole they now share.

"Damien," the black faceless figure called out to him. Snow could hardly believe his eyes as he saw his older brother, James Vincent, emerge from the shadows. The joy he felt was so consuming, Damien had forgotten about his statues as a prisoner and jumped to his feet, hugging his brother and laughing with excitement. The brother he had been hoping to see again was standing before him and could not have been happier.

Ghosts from the past could no longer haunt him. He felt such inner peace that the damage he felt on the inside fades away and he was whole once more.

"I've been looking everywhere for you." James tells his brother as he watches him cry in blissful joy. "I heard Alex caught you—thought you'd be here…I was kind of right."

"Yeah right—you intentionally got yourself caught because you predicted I would get myself into trouble." Damien playfully scoffs his brother in doubt. "Seeing as how I already know you deserted…I'm guessing you got caught trying to sneak in or were caught off guard and brought here."

"You got me there." James bluntly admitted with a laugh of his own. "I was eavesdropping on the com chatter when there was mention of a man caught near the asylum and that had escaped from their cave then I made camp the night before and they spotted me before I could them."

Damien looks around them as James explained how he came to be in this dungeon, in this dark chamber. The walls were made of only solid dirt. He quickly turns back to his brother when they were both finished. "So how do we get out of here?"

"I was hoping you had a way. They only let me out to take a shit or piss." James responded.

**Brimstone Bayou**

**1996**

"**Caleb Wilson"**

Caleb looks at the White Umbrella camp through the scope of his Remington 700 rifle, scouting for the best way to move in and extract Snow. First he needed to locate where the MIA was then a place to plant some C4 for a distraction.

His time in the Special Forces and CIA taught him a number of things—including POW rescues—and this was no different than one of those jobs.

Soldiers moved through the camp in patrol routes, with a few open windows of wiggle room to move with, and only stopped at one tent which supplied food. Caleb did see a glimpse of human sized cages where some prisoners were kept—likely for Fyers to torture for information later or save for a special occasion—and the commandos stopped by it every ten minutes.

"Where are you Snow?" Caleb asks himself, searching through the caged prisoners, not seeing Damien in one of them.

To add with this collection of complications, he could spot Wintergreen leaving the central tent in the camp. As Caleb looks through the sight at his former comrade, the dreary expression on his face morphed as he felt every part of him screaming to pull the trigger and put an end to Bill's life. He did however manage to control his anger and point the weapon away.

It's not going to be easy, Caleb thought, Bill is going to make things harder for us.

He was alone here. Logan and the others left for the camp after calling him, so his only back-up was Damien and the weapons with him.

Putting the rifle slung on his back, Caleb grabs a sword out as a patrol exits the camp. Sneaking up on them was easy, night was coming close, and they were easy prey. The first one he stabbed through the back and covered his mouth, the next two he cut through with after throwing them off balance with a few punches from his free hand.

The last one did not feel the sting impalement of the sword. Caleb instead broke his neck, and fell before he knew what hit him.

"Here's a good idea." He said to himself as he had the idea of using this costume to pull a reverse Trojan horse. All he has to do is infiltrate the camp and bring the uniform to Damien and he could sneak out in the commotion while Caleb himself would climb back over the fence.

The weapons liberated from the corpses were some pistols and assault rifle. Caleb put them in a hollowed out tree and planned to come back for the cache of weapons once Damien was out then sees the pack of Cerberus and zombies coming his way and says as he yanks his sword back out.

"One more round of practice before the mission?" he questioned the walking dead as they slowly came at him. "Find by me." He then quickly charges at them with both swords in his hands.


End file.
